Within The Same Sky
by ForbiddenKHfan216
Summary: A crime has taken place, and the one responsible has his own reasons for what he has done. This is the journey of these crimes and the reasons behind them all. These are done in a "drabble" style of writing, so the updates may take a long time to do and may not be very long. Alternate Universe of Kingdom Hearts. Rated M for content that may possibly offend readers.
1. Chapter 1: If We Have The Same Sky

**Part I**

As he stands there in the doorway, the bundle of flowers Roxas had been carrying tumbles from his hands. They had been a present for her, a gift 'just because', a way to show his love for her. And as he stands there, they fall from his hands just as the pair on the bed embrace.

They didn't even notice him there.

He just stands there, the tears trickling down his now pale face. His breath catches in his chest, and he still makes no noise. Slowly, his dark blue eyes close and he retreats into himself, somehow traveling back into his mind and sitting down in there.

He watches the pair kiss, the way that the boy with the silver hair so different from his own blond spikes held the girl he loved with every fiber of his being and whispered soft words into her ear. He watches as his now former friend touches his girlfriend with the kind of touch she had never received from his own hand.

He watches all this in a detached sort of way, like it was happening on a television screen to a pair of characters in a show he had never seen before and had come into the middle of an episode of. There in that little seat in the back of his mind, he watches Naminé and Riku kiss again and he marks how the passion in the boy's touch mirrored his own whenever he held that poor, defenseless little girl in his arms.

Well, not so defenseless he guesses.

Roxas drops his gaze to the bundle of flowers by his feet, watching the way that the shadows from the partially closed door spread across their petals. Beautiful roses, they catch the light from the candlelit room on their dew-laced folds and crevasses. They look like they're covered in diamonds, in fact, or some other lovely and rare gem. In his blank state of observation, he notices every fold in the petals, every miniscule line, every last dash of black that marred their beautiful and turned them ugly and gray.

He cries there in the hallway of her apartment, silently listening to the words being exchanged. With every word that came out of Riku's lips, his heart shatters again and again. His girlfriend does not respond. Naminé doesn't say a word and because of this, Roxas sits down. He slides on the wall, feeling the coldness of the plaster on his back until his rear was firmly on the floor.

He rocks himself, feeling a strange sense of loss. No, not strange. He lifts his head as he hears Riku's voice again. In his mind, he sits in a cold little white room. He sits on a white chair and in his hand, there is a different object than the flowers now discarded on the floor.

In reality, even as the mental Roxas begins to scream in sheer rage and pain, the real Roxas only reaches into his pocket. The once warm fleece of his white checkered jacket, a gift from Naminé on a Christmas long ago where he had finally gathered the courage to kiss her beneath the mistletoe and to whisper the words he had kept trapped in his heart for so long in the fear that he would lose her friendship, feels scratchy and cold to his hand. He slowly pulls out the small box and opens it, looking into it as the ring inside catches the light just as beautifully as the white roses did on the floor.

He closes the box as soon as he sees that the trio of Orichalcum+ are safe within their velvet box. The white gold hurts him, now he can't look at it. He remembers every ounce of hard work he had put into getting this ring, the number of lunches he had lost in order to pay another payment, the way he had gotten through a series of crappy odd jobs in order to see that girl's face as he knelt down on one knee. The sacrifice didn't matter to him then. It was worth it, it was worth it for _her_. The boy within his mind sits down to sob just as his real self stands up.

Roxas leaves the box behind... along with the roses he had carefully propped up against the door so they'd be noticed when one of them got out of the room. The card he had written remains tucked lovingly between a pair of intertwined flowers and a bright green vine with tinier wisps of some white flower he had no idea even existed.

_'I'll be thinking of you wherever you go, and wherever you end up going._

_I'll pray for your sorrows to end, and for them to never begin._

_I'll hope for your heart, knowing that mine is already yours._

_I will step forward to grant your wishes, and to grant my own;_

_Who knows? My journey, and in turn your own, may not be so hard._

_It might already have begun, or may never begin._

_All I know is that as long as there is the same sky,_

_We will never be apart._

_-Roxas'_

* * *

**Part II**

As he stood there in the doorway, the bundle of flowers Roxas had been carrying tumbles from his hands. They had been a present for her, a gift 'just because', a way to show his love for her, a way to show her he was sorry. And as he stands there, they fall from his hands just as the pair by the bed hug each other and begin to cry.

They didn't even notice him there.

He just stands there, the tears trickling down his now pale face. His breath catches in his chest, and he still makes no noise. Slowly, his dark blue eyes close and he retreats into himself, somehow traveling back into his mind and sitting down in there. She...

He watches the pair cling to each other, the way that the boy with the messy brown hair so different from his own blond spikes held the girl he loved with every fiber of his being and whispered soft words into her ear. He watches as Sora cradles the screaming Kairi, his own tears falling even as the princess begs for her friend to come back.

The small lump in the bedsheets does not respond to these words, not even when Kairi rips free from Sora's embrace and starts shaking the figure violently. He lets her, his gloved hands dropping to his sides as he stares at the spectacle without saying a word.

Roxas watches all this in a detached sort of way, like it was happening on a television screen to a series of characters in a show he had never seen before and had come into the middle of an episode of. There in that little seat in the back of his mind, he watches Kairi slap Naminé with a backhand that would have done any self-defense teacher proud and scream into her ear in an attempt to wake her up. He marks the way the girl's voice cracks and how she drops to her knees to scream into the body's empty embrace, how she holds that poor, defenseless little girl in his arms.

She didn't need to be strong anymore.

Roxas drops his gaze to the bundle of flowers by his feet, watching the way that the light from the fully opened door spread across their petals. They were lilies, her favorite flowers, and they catch the light from the candlelit room on their dew-laced folds and crevasses. They look like they're covered in diamonds, in fact, or some other lovely and rare gem. In his blank state of observation, he notices every fold in the petals, every miniscule line, every last dash of light that enhanced their inner folds and made them glow.

He cries there in the hallway of her apartment, silently listening to the words being exchanged. The doctor says a few words of technical jargon, explaining that Naminé' mind wasn't able to cope with her ordeal. Having been attacked by someone she thought was a friend was too much for her already fragile psyche, the doctor says in as many words he could possibly fit into one sentence. He sees Sora nod slowly, as if the idiot actually understood what he was saying.

Kairi says a few words to the doctor, each one sounding like complete gibberish until she says 'funeral.'

Roxas pays close attention, his mind grasping at every word the girl exchanges with the two men. With every word that came out of Kairi's lips, his heart shatters again and again. It couldn't be real. It just couldn't. His girlfriend does not respond, even as they talk about her in the most empty and cold of words. Funeral. Death. Cremation. Service. Naminé doesn't say a word and because of this, Roxas sits down. He slides on the wall, feeling the slickness of the brightly patterned wallpaper on his back until his rear was firmly on the floor.

He rocks himself, feeling a strange sense of loss. No, not strange. He lifts his head as he hears Kairi's voice again. Funeral. She's gone. In his mind, he sits in a cold little white room. He sits on a white chair and in his hand, there is a different object than the flowers now discarded on the floor. He holds a little yellow pencil, and he is drawing on the floor and he is drawing an image that was dear to his heart, and he would never stop drawing it until he saw her again.

He had been through this mess before. And he hadn't said he was sorry. He hadn't visited her, he hadn't said anything, believing a lie instead of the girl he loved. Naminé. He didn't believe her, only Riku's sick lies. He didn't believe it until he saw the police report and the order from the police to have Riku locked up. Until he saw the papers admitting Naminé to the hospital.

In reality, even as the mental Roxas begins to scream in sheer rage and pain, the real Roxas only reaches into his pocket. The once cold leather of his Organization cloak, a gift from the gang he had joined on a cold night where he had wanted the chance to destroy as much of the world as he could possibly get his hands onto, feels suffocating and boiling hot to his hand. He pulls out the small book and flips the pages until he reaches the page he had wanted to see.

He closes the sketchbook as soon as he sees that picture. He looks at the way that the two badly scribbled figures held their hands. In the picture, the little figure that was obviously him, looks up into the sunset with his head held high. In reality, he hadn't held his head up like that since the night he saw the attack... and had completely misunderstood it. The girl in white holds his hand tightly in the picture, holding it as if she would never let it go. On her left hand, there is a small... but noticeable white ring. He remembers that ring. He remembers everything he put into it, and the way he had kissed it when he ran down the streets to her apartment to give it to her. It had been worth it, it had been worth it for _her_. Only for her. The boy within his mind sits down to stare numbly into the distance, refusing to believe what he sees with his own eyes just as his real self stands up.

Roxas enters the room, ignoring the startled cries from both Sora and Kairi, the way that Kairi latches onto him and begs him not to look. He looks at the body in the bed, the way that the bed-sheet was wrapped around her throat and the way that the empty bottle of medication was in Naminé's hand. Unable to associate the purple figure with the girl he loves, Roxas instead turns to the bedside table with the vague idea of dropping his flowers onto it.

That's where he sees them. A bundle of withered flowers. The white roses... The white roses he had carefully propped up against the door so they'd be noticed, the ones he had left behind to leave her a message that had never been true. The card he had written remains tucked lovingly between the pair of intertwined flowers. They are now crumbling and rotting, their yellowish petals scattered all over the table. The card is folded, and had been unfolded so many times that it is nearly torn in half.

And there is a note besides these flowers, underneath an empty jewelry box.

_'I'll think of you wherever I end up, and wherever you are,_

_I pray for your sorrow to end, and that you will not mourn because my heart is forever within yours._

_I have waited a long time to realize this wish, and I know that I have betrayed you._

_What happened hurt, but who knows? It may have hurt because I hurt you. Maybe this journey won't be so hard, and with this, you'll be set free from the monster that shattered you. Live long, and be happy for me. I can't leave you behind with these memories of me. Remember the happiness, and do not let them become chains of memories for you._

_This new journey has begun for me, do not let it begin for you._

_There are many worlds left in this universe, but remember this..._

_There is one sky, and as always, one destiny. Mine is with you._

_I'm sorry, I have to go now. I love you._

_Naminé'_


	2. Chapter 2: Want

As the door swings open, Riku looks up to see his best friend walking in with his daughter in his arms. Immediately, he relaxes, knowing that this is only a friendly visit. His friend was there to see him, even if he had done something horrible. He was still... then he sees it. Sora flashes him a smile but the dark look in his eyes remain guarded.

Riku wilts. No... they couldn't... go back to the way they were before. He sets his hands on the table, letting the handcuffs clank onto the hard metal. Little Xion wiggles in her daddy's arms, obviously impatient to be put down. He watches how Sora holds her tighter, despite her wails of protests. He watches as Sora looks at him how once they would have watched a rabid animal, careful to see if it would attack.

Sora... his best friend... is afraid of him now.

Sora sits down as a guard pulls out a chair for him, finally loosening Xion just enough for her to sit on his lap comfortably. The three year old looks at Riku with the most solemn of expressions before glancing up at Sora, carefully judging her daddy's mood before pulling a little blue handbag into her lap. Preoccupied by watching the toddler, the two men don't talk.

There is no need to talk, both of them having questions that would not be answered in this place, nor at this time. Xion digs around in her bag, making baby talk grunts to herself as Riku speaks quietly to her father. "Sora... good to see you." He says in a weak voice, knowing just how lame he sounded. He was in prison, dressed in bright orange fatigues, and all he could say was that it was good to see him? C'mon, even Sora could tell that he didn't mean it.

Sora just smiles again. "Xion really wanted to come. She said she had something to show Uncle Riku." He says, chuckling fondly as the little girl peers up at him when he says her name. She flashes a grin with equally as white teeth as her father's before going back to her task of finding whatever it was she brought him. Riku nods, the movement causing the handcuffs to shift a little on his wrists. Sora scratches his nose, loosening his arm from the child's waist even more as he begins to relax. "Yeah, she said she wanted to show you... some drawing she did. I dunno, she wouldn't show it to me at all. She said it was for you." He repeats, keeping the conversation firmly on the little girl.

Riku nods again. He knows what it means. He leans back in his chair a little, closing his eyes as his head moves back to rest on the back of the seat. It was a silent agreement to not talk about what happened. About what he did.

About how he caused a woman to kill herself.

Xion lets out a happy cry, clapping her little hands together eagerly when she finds the drawing. She pulls out a crumpled bit of paper out of the bag, and before anyone could stop her, she crawls up onto the table and slaps it down in front of Riku as expertly as a poker dealer in Las Vegas. "This is my picture, Uncle Riku! I drawed it for you!" She declares in a proud voice, pointing down at the sheet of computer paper. He looks down and sees several spiky-headed figures, all with different shades of color. One had silver. She points to it, smiling brightly. "That one's you, and this one's Uncle Roxas, and Mister Axel, and Daddy!" She says, pointing to a blond, a red head, and a brunet respectively. Riku chuckles and pulls the drawing towards himself, observing it carefully.

For such a little kid, Xion was a very good artist. With only a few sweeps of a crayon, she had captured the different personalities of each of her unofficial family members perfectly. Sora of course, is smiling brightly and waving up at the sliver of blue sky up at the top of the page. Axel is holding someone's hand, a little girl with black hair and blue eyes. Riku smiles. Xion. Of course she would have included herself. The little drawing of Xion holds Axel's hand and waves up at the sky just like her father. They were both so hyper, even in a picture, that it was hard to hold back a laugh. Roxas on the other hand, is scowling. There are streaks of blue on the figure's cheeks, and Riku almost feels like he had been slapped when he figures out what they were supposed to be. Tears. Xion had drawn Roxas crying.

Xion hums, touching the wax-covered paper. "Uncle Roxas cries a lot now. He's sad, Uncle Riku. Do you know why he's so sad?" She asks, looking up at him so expectantly that he knows she thought he had the answer. For whatever reason, this little girl saw him as one of the lights of her whole life, and believed in him so greatly that it hurt to know that he was nothing but a fraud. Riku nods and touches the image of Roxas. "I hurt Roxas. That's why I'm in here." He says quietly.

Xion frowns. "What _is_ here?" The child demands, looking at the armed guard seated in the corner of the room curiously. The guard, unafraid of a simple toddler, just waves to her and puts his rifle back onto his shoulder. Riku knows that he is just waiting for the excuse to shoot him and scowls at the concept of it. Everyone hated him here, and for good reason. That didn't mean he had to take their crap, did it? He was a criminal, at least in the eyes of everyone else. So? The inmate looks back at the little girl and feels his rage immediately ebb away, soothed by the presence of the child. He smiles and leans in to whisper to her. She perks up and listens. "This is like a time out for grown-ups, Xion. This is where bad people go." He informs her, watching as her face deflates.

Xion sticks her thumb into her mouth for a moment, sucking the nail before looking at Riku with the greatest amount of confusion he has ever seen. He smiles; she is just so cute. "But you're good... Why are you here?" She mutters to herself, looking at the picture as if the paper itself had betrayed her and in turn, Riku. "Did you do something bad?" She asks next when she sees that Riku wasn't going to answer that question. He nods, knowing that there is no way for such a young child to understand what he did. Xion pauses, looking up at the sky as she ponders the idea in her mind.

Sora sighs. "Xion, get off the table." He scolds, reaching for the little girl. She immediately squeals, distracted from her problem by the idea of avoiding her daddy's hands. Riku grins as Xion scoots across the table and jumps into his lap, ducking under the table in an attempt to hide. He looks down as she covers her face with the hem of his orange jacket, hiding her eyes so that Sora didn't see her. He blushes slightly as she wiggles in his lap, and he feels the vibration of her giggle deep within his chest.

The guard starts to get up, obviously worried about Xion being by the hardened criminal, but Sora quickly waves at him, showing him that it was okay. The guard sits down reluctantly but Sora stands up. "Sorry, Riku. Guess she still likes you," He chuckles, nodding towards the little lump in Riku's oversized orange suit. Riku nods, still blushing a bit. He waves to show him that it was okay. After all, Xion wasn't doing anything bad, and there was no way that Riku would hurt her. First off, he loved the little girl with all of his heart, and second, he was hand-cuffed. Sora walks around the table, kneeling besides Riku's chair. Riku barely hears his muttered thought as he speaks out loud. "After all, hatred is for adults. Kids... can't understand it very well."

What true words. The little girl still loved Riku with everything she had, seeing him as a figure of both dominance and of kindness. The days of her receiving a candy or an ice cream pop from that man's hands are still there in her heart, untouched by any of the darkness that had accumulated in everyone else's. The days of when Riku scolded Xion when she had done something bad are still there, and so are the days where Xion was saved by him when she got too mischievous and fell into danger. She loved him, and despite his deeds and her lack of understanding, she saw a good person in him.

Riku groans as Xion giggles, and feels her move around in his lap and place her hands over her eyes. "Daddy can't see me!" She cries out happily, moving in closer to Riku's stomach to hide. He blushes a little hard, embarrassed by the whole show. Sora chuckles and nods down, motioning for Riku to hug her so she wouldn't jump out from his lap and start running around the room like a hyperactive gazelle. He nods, smiling to himself. Xion was so... cute. He's about to do as Sora says but then feels the little girl's head move up to his chest, more specifically his heart, and press against it. He freezes, feeling his heartbeat suddenly increase as he feels the child snuggling into his chest. She stays there for a few seconds before Sora pounces, snatching the kid right out of Riku's clothes with a triumphant cry of glee.

Riku gulps, breathing a little harder as he watches Sora hold Xion up above his head and the little girl screaming in delight. "Higher, daddy, higher!" She squeals as Sora spins around with her in his loving embrace before he tosses her up into the air and catches her as she plummets, holding her close as she laughs happily. Riku watches this with a strange look in his eyes, a longing that even he didn't understand. He touches his heart and smiles, closing his eyes. He was so happy that they came to see them.

The guard coughs in the corner, obviously wanting to interrupt the playdate. All three of them turn, confused. The man blushes slightly. "Time's up." He mutters, probably embarrassed at having sat and stared at the boisterous antics of the family members. Sora's face immediately falls, and the moment that she notices, so does Xion's in an equally comically and over-dramatic way. Riku laughs, immediately feeling that much better at having re-secured his place in his friend's heart and of knowing he is still firmly in Xion's.

Riku bows his head, hiding his pleased smile. His eyes darken with a strange emotion as he watches the little girl, and once again he has to fight back the urge to get up and rip her from her father's arms. He watches as Sora starts begging with the guard, asking for five more minutes so he could talk with him. He quivers there in his seat, and curses viciously at being bolted to the chair so he couldn't get up. Riku curses everyone and everything in this dank little prison, for not letting him hold Xion. He has to satisfy himself with just the image of her in her father's arms, when she should have been in his. Xion begs along with the guard, asking for just a few more minutes so she could explain her picture to Uncle Riku some more. The guard begins to soften at the girl's request (as well he should, Riku thinks with bitterness. How could anyone resist Xion's charms?) but shakes his head adamantly.

With a cry of dismay, the two turn to Riku and smile apologetically. Xion immediately bursts into tears, wailing that she wanted to stay with Uncle Riku. The words twist in Riku's heart, and he feels the messed up desires that he had tried to keep locked up being brought up to the surface. He feels his arms shaking with want, he wanted to hold her and make her stop crying. He wanted to bring her close and hug her, he wanted to twist her head off and strangle her, he wanted to kiss her and rock her, he wanted to cut off her arms and her legs and hide her away so no one would ever take her away from him again.

He wanted Xion.

He feels his lips twist up into a grin and he trembles with the force of his desires, and he knows they are wrong. But he doesn't care. He would do anything, everything, kill anything and everyone that got into his way for her. Xion cries harder and Riku has to hold himself to keep from ripping the handcuffs off and grabbing her to get her to calm down. He tries to think hard on the idea that he would cause serious damage to himself, and to the guard when the fat bastard got up to restrain him. There would be blood everywhere, Sora would freak out, Xion... Riku sucks in a deep breath, reminding himself that Xion would be traumatized if he hurt himself; like every three year old, she was both fascinated by blood and repelled by it.

He didn't want Xion to be repelled by him. Anything but that. Please, anything but that.

Sora quickly starts making shushing noises to the sobbing child, rocking her in his arms as lovingly as any father would have in that situation. "Shh, Xion, shh... don't let Uncle Riku see you cry!" He implores her, looking up at Riku again as if he wanted the criminal to repeat after him to get the little girl to calm down. For a moment, Sora pauses, a look of confusion on his face. It is at this point that Riku knows that he is unable to keep the rage out of his face. Instead, he just smiles, a cruel cold little smile that leaves Sora stunned and shuts him up instead of Xion.

The guard wretches Riku up, having undone his handcuffs while the two men were preoccupied with Xion's crying. Sora watches Riku as the guard starts to recuff him. The dark look in his eyes just grows stronger as Xion starts to hiccup and choke on her own snot. Chills run down the father's spine as he identifies the emotion as... but no... Riku couldn't... this was his _daughter_... Riku was her freakin' godfather for Pete's sake! But no, that lust was still there in his eyes and it seems to grow stronger as Sora brings Xion closer to him, hugging her tighter and rocking her to get her to calm down. The hatred is so damn obvious in his face that Sora doesn't know how he had never noticed it before. He shakes harder, suddenly fearing for his child.

How many times had he allowed Riku to wander alone with Xion? How many times had he begged Riku to babysit for him just one night so Kairi and him could go get some rest? How many days had Riku picked her up from Daycare and brought her to the ice cream parlor, or so he said? Sora rubs his fingers through his little girl's hair, feeling panic choke him from the force of all these questions and all of the questions he didn't dare form in his mind just in case that they actually happened. And then Sora understands. Riku's crime makes a sick, and sudden sense and it makes him cling to his sobbing child that much harder.

Naminé... looked just like... Riku's real target... the one he had been after all along was...


	3. Chapter 3: Oathkeeper

**Oathkeeper**

The two sit at the table, each one lost in their own thoughts. Beneath the table, playing with a handful of worn old blocks, sits the object of their worries. Xion continues to stack up her toys in pleasing patterns, red to red, blue to blue, and all other childish nonsense as her parents talk quietly amongst themselves.

"How... why?" Kairi says finally, putting her hand onto her husband's. Automatically, he curls his hand around hers. Sora shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't want to know." He says honestly, feeling a tremor of fear crawl down his spine like a sickeningly cold insect moving over his flesh. He is living every parents' nightmare, the idea of his best friend touching his little girl like... the way that he had...

Sora shivers harder, despite the thick heat radiating from the kitchen on the other side of the wall of their apartment. Every monday, their landlady baked goodies like cookies and brownies; she always shared with the young family, having gotten attached to them after a series of misadventures and helpfulness from the young father. Even so, the idea of Miss Biddy's cookies turns Sora's stomach.

How could he eat if his baby was in danger?

Xion lets out a surprised cry when her tower of blocks suddenly tumbles onto her. Her parents immediately duck down under the table to look at her. She grins and points to the muddle of toys before picking them up again and starting to stack them up again. With the same sort of smile she had given to her beloved uncle Riku, Xion plops a red cube block into her daddy's hand and then a pink spherical one into her mommy's.

The parents look at each other before smiling at the three year old. At her direction, they place the blocks at the very tops of the towers she was building. Kairi couldn't help it now. She turns away from the child, the tears trickling thickly down her cheeks as she sobs into her hands. She trembles, her thoughts so obviously on the things that could have happened that it was heartbreaking to look at her. She looks so afraid.

Sora pulls her into his arms, ignoring the startled toddler that was now watching them. "No... she'll be okay," he murmurs into his wife's hair, rocking her body into his own as she sobs harder. Xion stares at her parents, her innocent blue eyes now filling with tears because her mommy was crying and she didn't know why. Sora keeps speaking to his wife, and his words ring with the promise of an oath that would never be broken.

"He will _never_ touch our little girl."


	4. Chapter 4: The Loneliest Day

**The Loneliest Day**

As the sun begins to shine through the battered white curtains on his window, the man curls back into the ball he had been sleeping in the entire night and buries his head in his pillow. The sun is shining, the sky is clear with no sign of clouds appearing all day in its blueness, and the island songbirds are already singing their most cheerful tunes for all of the world to hear. 'Good morning, good morning to you, isn't the most beautiful day?' and all that.

How could the world be so damn happy if they had taken _his_ world away?

Roxas curls even more into himself, practically in the fetal position now. And really, that wouldn't have been too bad of a place for him now. Curled up in his mother's belly without a care, only needing to decide if he wanted to kick or wiggle around. Roxas lets out a sob, muffled by the thick downy pillow his head is lying on.

A baby. They were going to try for a baby, eventually. A baby. _Their_ baby. In the very back of his mind, his subconscious cruelly plays the image of a bouncing, pink-cheeked child with the same beautiful violet blue eyes that haunted him now. He hadn't even thought about children before now, they are... were... only 23. And yet, those images of a happy life continue and he watches a slightly older version of himself wrap his arms around the woman holding the child.

Roxas feels the tears falling down his cheeks, the hot salty liquid burning his skin as they pass. It hurt... Namine... he clutches at the pillow, burying his face even deeper into its soft embrace. Oh, how he wanted to go home. Even there, safe in his apartment and in his bed, Roxas aches for the touch and the embrace of someone who is long gone.

"I should have been there for you."


	5. Chapter 5: Hope

**Hope**

He touches the photographic paper, ignoring the looks of the other men at the table as he cradles it in his hands as gently as one would handle a newborn. His fingers, pale with the lack of sun he forced onto himself, greedily stroke the image of his friends... and of the one he loved with all of his heart. He smiles at it, the same sort of gentle smile he would have given his girl if she had been sitting next to him at that very moment.

In fact, he is in a _**very**_ good mood today. Riku had gotten to see Sora, and seeing his best friend was always soothing to his soul. The younger man has a strange sort of personality, the kind that would have made him a hero in another time and another place. His heart is a good one, and Riku knows that his best friend would come back to visit him. Even his little... lapse back in the visitation room would not affect their friendship too badly. All he had to do is swear to Sora that his intent was normal, that he would _**never**_ harm Xion, and to beg him to bring his daughter back for regular visits.

He runs his thumb thoughtfully over the image of the little girl posing in front of a birthday cake and smiles. Her smile is the brightest thing in the picture, and he can barely restrain himself from cuddling with it like he would with the actual child. She is just too adorable, and even though Xion was barely turning three in the picture, it is obvious she would grow up to be just as beautiful as her lovely mother Kairi.

Riku smiles, and it is the most beautiful smile that the prison ever witnessed within its dank, filthy walls.


	6. Chapter 6: Judgment I

**Judgment I**

They stand together, the members of an unofficial family all looking at the single person up at the front of the room. Riku, as always, looks relaxed and almost serene in a way. His dark eyes flicker occasionally to his friends, and they soften when they stop on them. Just the sight of them is enough to soothe his troubled soul and his gaze drops onto the sleeping little girl in the arms of a redheaded man sitting next to her mother.

The two whisper softly to themselves and the man, Axel, keeps looking up at Riku in a mixture of disbelief and horror. Each time, Riku notices, his grip tightens around the little girl until Xion moans in her sleep and then he allows her to wiggle in his lap before repeating the cycle and holding her tightly.

The sight of Axel repulses Riku. It is all he can do to keep from standing up from the witness and charging over there to rip Xion from his arms. A low growl vibrates in his throat as he lifts his hand and mumbles to tell the truth, nothing but the truth, so help him. She should have been in his arms, only his arms, how dare Kairi let that slut bastard Axel hold her daughter? He couldn't even take care of a paper bag, much less a child.

Oh, so help Axel if he dared harm a single little hair on his baby's head.

"Mister Takamura, are you listening?" The judge suddenly demands, slamming her gavel down onto the wood. The jarring impact makes Riku flinch, startled by how loud it was. He swallows hard, tearing his eyes from Xion and Axel. He shakes his head no, lowering his eyes as the judge adjusts her glasses on her nose. He can feel the look of grim amazement as she stares at him. "These lovely men and women are deciding whether or not you'll be going to prison, hun, whether or not you get to go home with your family tonight, and you're not even paying attention on what they're sayin about you?" She asks, letting him lift his head up. Her dark brown eyes watch him, and his gaze falls back onto the one he loves with every fiber of his being. He smiles.

"Sorry," Riku says in a charming voice, allowing just enough of his lust into his eyes to look that much more attractive. He shifts in his seat, leaning against the podium now. "I've found that most of what people say about me is slander anyway." He winks confidently to the crowd, hearing them laugh in amusement but his eyes remain locked on the sleeping child.

His heart races as Xion's beautiful eyes slowly begin to open, and he can feel his entire body reacting to the child's gaze. He gulps, feeling his heart hammer fiercely and he craves her weight in his arms. Oh, how Riku wanted to hold her. His fingers twitch with the urge to wrap themselves around her throat, everything in him just wanted her...

He looks up at the prosecution, shaking his head at the question that had just muddled his thoughts. "Yes, I know Namine. She was a friend of my friend Sora." Had he ever had a relationship with her? Riku smirks, amused by the question. "No. She was more Sora's friend than mine. I just knew her."

Had Namine ever expressed a desire to be more intimate? Riku runs a hand through his hair, irritated by the questions but allowing them to be asked because he could watch Xion all he wanted and no one would care. "No. She had a boyfriend. They were going to be engaged soon." He says honestly, and the rage in Roxas's eyes is enough for him to look back at the mourning lover. If looks could kill... Roxas looks like he is about to leap over the wooden bench before him and rush Riku and pummel him into a bloody pulp.

The accused smiles coolly and leans into the mike, saying his final words for this part of the session. "I had no interest in Namine whatsoever. She was not my type... nor did I want her."


	7. Chapter 7: Birds In the Sun

**Birds In the Sun**

Xion's eyes open, but her ears hear more even when she is dozing. She doesn't know what is going on, only that Uncle Riku is up there at the front of the room with a lady. The lady is all in black, and she reminds Xion of the pretty birds that sometimes are on her window when she wakes up. The birds sing to her when she goes to take a nap when Mommy tells her to. Xion smiles sleepy as she snuggles into her Uncle Axel's tummy. Mommy says that the birds are sunlings, pretty little birds that dance like living shadows in the light, and they sing good little girls to sleep and give them pretty dreams.

Xion isn't sure she is a good girl, but the sunlings sing to her so she must be, right? She opens her eyes more and stares at the sunling lady with Uncle Riku. Her black hair is the same color as the wings of the birdies, and this realization makes her laugh out loud with sheer delight. Her mommy's words echo in her head, and she giggles in excitement and repeats them to herself.

_'In the darkness, there will always be the brightest light.'_

Uncle Riku and the woman look over at her, each one smiling in amusement. She notices how Uncle Riku smiles at her, and it's the way he does whenever he pats her head and tells her that he loves her. Xion waves to her friend before Uncle Axel slaps her hand down to his lap. She looks up at him in confusion, not understanding why he had grabbed her like that. His hand is pressed tightly on top on hers, keeping it stuck on his lap. Axel smiles at her, making a shushing noise as he wraps his other arm around her waist.

Xion whimpers, feeling tears prickle in her eyes. The slap had hurt a little, but she is a strong girl and it had stopped hurting a little while ago but... there is something funny in Uncle Axel's eyes. The pretty green happiness is gone, and there is something funny in its place. He hugs her close, snuggling into her soothingly as he begins to rock her. But there is still something funny in Axel's eyes and it scares her.

There is a moment in every life when a child realizes a painful reality. It is then that they understand the limitation of human strength, and that it is no longer infinite. No, it is finite, and adults are no different. They have their strengths and their weaknesses, their moments of knowledge and foolishness. They learn that their parents cannot protect them, and that their parents can know fear. Fear is the strongest emotion that a person can feel, and it is the one emotion that drives them to accomplish the impossible in order to keep those that they wish to protect safe. Fear and love intertwine together to create a human being. All human beings love, no matter in what shape, and all human beings fear.

It is fear that Xion sees in her Uncle Axel's eyes, and that knowledge scares her.

The sunling lady looks at Xion and her dark brown eyes crinkle into what looks like a smile. Xion smiles back but the fear is still there. The woman turns to Uncle Riku and asks him a question but Uncle Riku keeps looking at Xion as if he wanted to go touch her. Xion knows that Uncle Riku doesn't like it when she cries, so she tries to keep quiet and listen to the grownups talk.

Axel keeps holding her, the fear for the little girl growing in his heart. But she is safe for now, Riku is on the stand... and away from her.


	8. Chapter 8: Judgment II

**Judgment II**

The prosecution, this time a man in an overly expensive looking suit and a gray tie, glares at Riku. They have reached the climax of their accusations, and Riku has had enough of them. "Now... you say you were in the apartment the night that Miss Hikari was attacked." He says in a pompous, confident voice. Riku nods. "Yeah. I had to give her some papers." He answers honestly, knowing that the papers themselves were probably in one of the evidence files somewhere. They had practically bagged her entire apartment when it was discovered that Naminé was dead.

Dead. Naminé was dead, dead, dead. The idea of that is almost impossible for him to understand. How could she be dead? She was one of the most alive people he had ever met... the way she just sort of sparkled into life, a witch with memories of nothing but light, the very mirror image of Kairi and in turn, Xion. Naminé dead. It had to be impossible.

It would be the same as Xion being dead, and his little girl is sitting just out of his reach with Axel.

"Now, you and Miss Hikari were... partners?" The lawyer asks as he adjusts his tie. He is a nervous sort, jumping around with so much energy that it is amazing that he is not literally vibrating with it. Riku shakes his head. "No. I helped her with her studio work, Kairi was the partner. It was their studio, Kairi did sculptures and Naminé painted." Riku says, thinking that the lawyer was some kind of stupid idiot. Did he look like an artist? He could barely use a paintbrush without smearing the crap like a five year old on crack. And he had seen some whacked out paintings doing the paperwork for the studio. "So you had nothing to do with the art?" The lawyer asks again. There is a look on his pasty face that shows that he didn't believe him.

"No," Riku says curtly, feeling the urge to reach across the stand and just slam the stupid idiot to the floor and beat him until that pale ass face turned red and then blue. There is no color in it, and Riku wants to paint it until there is so much color that Naminé herself would have been proud at the variety of hues. He shakes his head, forcing it to clear. "Look, all I did was paperwork. What does that have to do with _anything_?"

The lawyer smirks, a simpering little sharklike smile. "Well, it is obvious that you wouldn't have done it for money. Blackmail." Riku laughs. Money? He thought that he had done it just for _**money**_? The lawyer looks unnerved by the laughter and so Riku smiles at him, allowing even more of the darkness within his heart out. A twisted look appears in his eyes, the grim sort of look of a seasoned killer would have as he watches the next victim. The man immediately turns pale, his breath hitching in his chest from sheer fear. Riku leans across the stand, cocking his head to the side with the coldness of a surgeon about to perform surgery. "No. I don't need money. I have plenty of my own." Riku says calmly before leaning back in his seat. He was sick of this crap, sick of this whole game, sick of pretending to be a-

He suddenly hears a muffled sob and his head whips around to see Xion crying in Axel's lap. Flames seem to suddenly surge through his body when Axel starts bouncing the little girl on his knee. Rage burns through his veins as the judge says something to him, but the words mean nothing to him. His little girl is crying, and she was in that bastard Axel's arms! He should have her in his hands, he should be the one comforting her, she was his, Xion is _**his**_ little girl! His, and his alone! His to do whatever he wanted!

He feels the wood of the stand crack under his fingers and Riku is unaware of when he even started holding onto it. "I did it out of spite." The words start spilling out, so undone he is by his emotions and his desire to have Xion. "There is someone I want, but no one will let me have her. So I took Naminé instead, because she looks just like her." The defense stares at him in horror, but that is nothing compared to the black rage in Roxas's eyes. The blue turns into red as Roxas leaps across the bench, his hand already clutched into a fist. A wordless scream of grief rips through his lips and the tears fall endlessly down his cheeks as he rushes the stand. Two guards nab him, pinning him to the ground and forcing them there.

Riku smiles and he looks at Xion, watching as the little girl stops crying from the sheer force of his desire. She looks confused and very scared, but Riku knows that she needed time to understand. She would accept him... eventually. He sucks in a breath and says:

"I know what kind of man I am now. Naminé died helping me understand that. I will never regret that. If I had to do that again, I would... and I will destroy anyone that gets in between me... and the girl I love." He bows his head, clutching his ears as Xion wails louder. Tears stream down his eyes and his mind goes blank. He can feel himself say a last couple words. "Please stop crying, Xion. Please make her stop. Anything but her tears."

The guards tackle him as his body goes on autopilot and jumps over the stand, obviously trying to reach the girl to soothe her. Couldn't they see that the child needed him? Riku needed to get to Xion, to soothe her, to calm her down and hold her. The last thing he sees before one of the over-reactive guards slams his head into the concrete floor is the image of Xion holding her little hand out to him. He can see every detail of that tiny little hand, down to the small plastic ring she wears on her middle finger, to the red and blue bead bracelet on her wrist. Her hand reaches out for his own, and she wails his name as Axel suddenly sprints down the aisle, the practiced movement showing that he had been prepared for any moment that Riku came near Xion. He was in the way. He had always been in the way.

He watches as Axel whisks her away and as she holds her hand out to him. That brief moment secures the little girl in his heart... and he knows. _'She is mine. Anyone who stands between us will die.'_


	9. Chapter 9: Darkness In The Light

**Alright, I have to butt in now.**

**I wasn't going to do authoress notes but now I am. I don't approve of what you are about to read.**

**Anyone who has these thoughts towards a child or towards anyone in this way and form should be locked up.**

**This is not healthy love, this love should not exist. Absolutely NO adult in any circumstance should force themselves on a child like this or in any form. I'm speaking as one of the victims. Don't. Just don't. You have no idea what the damage will be. I do. I know the damage. No one should EVER go through it. Mine isn't the worst case, mine isn't the best case. People die from this. People die because of what others do to them, til they're so badly damaged in the head that they end it. Others live with it until the day they die in their beds, and they believe that they will always be the guilty party.  
**

**With those words in mind, Kingdom Hearts is not mine.**

* * *

Darkness in the Light

As he lies there in the bed of the prison infirmary, the man dreams about his old life, not knowing that soon it will end. He dreams about the friends he will leave behind and of the child he harbored an obsession with. He dreams of what could have been and of what will never be.

Riku dreams, and he does not know that he will be taken away from the rest of his family.

The little girl sat on the ground, lazily playing with the sand in her sandbox. She had expressed a wish to go to the beach, but her parents had dubbed it too expensive to go to yet and that they would go later. Xion had sulked and though Riku had offered to bring the entire family to the beach, all expenses paid, Sora's pride had refused it. And so they were, sitting outside in the sun beneath the paopu tree in Xion's sandbox.

It was a hot day, and so the sweat dripped down both of their noses and onto the sand. Xion keeps piling the sand around her legs, ignoring how the grit accumulates on the stockings she was wearing on her legs. Her buckled shoes lay abandoned on the grass and so the overheated babysitter and babysittee keep playing.

Riku was hot, and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. He just wiped the sweat from his eyes and kept digging the hole at Xion's instructions. He hated the sun, hated the heat, and hated being outside. But still he dug, allowing the little girl besides him to scoop up the sand in a red bucket and compress into shape. Xion had plenty of toys, mostly bought by Riku.

It gave him a strange feeling to watch her play with something he'd gotten her. Riku watched her as she scraped the sand with a small trowel before plopping into the bucket. "Uncle Riku?" The toddler asked as she flipped the bucket onto its side to shovel more sand into it. He paused in the middle of digging and wiped his hands on his jeans. She looked at him with an odd expression, puzzled and confused. "What is it, Xion?" Riku said as she plopped a seashell shaped sand molder into the bucket.

The toddler wet her lips and bit them in concentration, and Riku felt a hard pang of want in his heart before he forced his eyes away. The feeling felt sick, wrong even. He had never felt like this around anyone, and he should not have been feeling like that around a three year old. Xion looked up again as she flattened sand into the molder, obviously intent on making the perfect shape. "Why do you look at me?"

The question made the man flinch and he lowered his eyes to the ground as that penetrating blue eyed stare fixed onto his face. His skin flushed red, and he knew it had nothing to do with the heat. An aching desire to touch the little girl soared through him and he cursed violently as the images flickered through his mind.

Riku watched as his hands wrapped slowly around Xion's legs and he pulled her into his lap. The girl blinked in surprise but remained silent, looking up at him with a thousand questions apparent in her eyes. He touched his hand onto her cheek and buried his face into the back of the child's pink dress. Riku inhaled, memorizing the sweet scent of detergent, sweat, and the perfumed soap that Kairi used in Xion's bubblebath.

Strawberry. Sweet strawberry.

He smiled, an image of giving the little girl a bath himself. He felt something stir inside him, a powerful longing, and the little girl wiggled out of his lap. He can see a vaguely disturbed expression on Xion's face but he yanked her back into his arms and clung to her. She cried out from how tight his grip is and started to wiggle even harder to try to loosen it. Riku smiled and whispered into her ear, inhaling more of her scent as he spoke. Something deep inside of him answered her question, and the answers sear through his heart as he understood just what they meant. "I watch you because I want you. I watch you because I love you. I watch you because you're mine."

He was a monster for feeling that way... but he didn't care.

The words meant nothing to the little girl, despite how she asked, and Riku knows it. He smiled. He would just have to show her. He ran his hands onto her legs and began to caress them. He would just have to show her.


	10. Chapter 10: Ask Away

**Ask Away**

Kairi only listens as the lawyer speaks quietly to her husband. She is too preoccupied with the child sleeping in her arms. Xion had a habit of crying until she couldn't breathe, and then she would collapse and sleep for several hours. She is in the middle of one of these self-induced naps, and Kairi couldn't be happier to have her baby safe in her arms.

She watches the toddler doze, and every little breath that emerges from that snot-filled nose seems like a treasure to her. Xion is safe and sound. Kairi kisses her child on the forehead and cuddles with her, smiling when the unconscious girl snuggles back.

Sora slips his hand into hers, squeezing it for strength as he speaks. "Is there anything we can do?" He asks, fear hitching his voice up a few notes. The lawyer glances at him, then to the child. From the disturbed look on her face, it is obvious what she thinks of the situation and of Riku's obsession. The sheer wrongness of the whole thing makes her shudder but the lawyer simply shakes her head no. "Riku confessed. That alone will give you time," she replies honestly but she sighs. "But this kind of charge... on Destiny Islands, the maximum penalty is... well, about four years, if the jury doesn't vote for community service."

The family is stunned. Four years? Out of all the possible penalties for forcing a woman to her death, four years? It is almost unimaginable to think that an act that destroyed and changed so many lives had such a weak consequence. The life of a woman who is beloved to them is gone, extinguished like a candle by the fevered ravings of her mind because the act of one she considered a friend... and the punishment doesn't even amount to a fourth of her life.

The lawyer notices the disbelieving looks and sighs. "We can try to get him on another charge, murder or at least manslaughter. That could add a few more." Sora nods eagerly, beginning to smile a little. Though he smiles, there is a guilty look in his eyes, and it is the look of a best friend knowing he is a traitor. He knows that by denying Riku access to his child, Riku will hate him with everything he had.

The words the man had uttered when he confessed echo in his best friend's mind. "I will destroy anyone that gets in between me... and the girl I love." These words are ominous, and full of the dark intent that lay in Riku's heart. Sora knows that if released, he could very well keep that vile vow... all while harming his child.

With a fond gaze towards the baby in her arms, Kairi nods at Sora. He holds her hand tightly, weaving his fingers with hers as he asked: "How could we get him for child molestation?" Despite how calm the father sounded, his voice cracks and turns high-pitched when he utters that dreaded word. The lawyer blinks, and looks at the sleeping child.

Xion dozes peacefully, unaware that they are deciding her fate. When the toddler giggles in her sleep, no doubt lost in some fantasy that only the most innocent of children conjure up, the woman makes her decision. She would take the case, and refuse to be paid. There are some things more important than money... and she sees the evidence of it in these children's eyes.

The lawyer leans in and says very simply: "We ask Xion."


	11. Chapter 11: Sweet Child Of Mine

**Sweet Child Of Mine**

Sora walks up to Xion as she finishes stacking up her blocks in a shape that vaguely resembled a castle. She is stiff with concentration as she stands up onto her very tippy toes to try to get one last block up onto the top. The castle is easily bigger than she is and contains almost all of her toys, even the smallest of then. Its walls are made of the plain wooden cubes that Sora had carved her, all stacked up neatly on the floor and making a sturdy foundation. The next layer are the ornate stone, cubes, spheres and cones that Riku given her for her birthday. They are covered in beautiful depictions of flowers and lines to represent bricks and little windows. Her auntie Naminé had painted them for her, and Xion had been delighted with her new "castle" blocks.

Sora smiles when Xion growls to herself, obviously too small to finish her castle and to put the last cone where she wanted it. Instead, she drops it onto the floor and pulls a little black box out of a pile of discarded containers. She busies herself with pulling out colored marbles and placing them into the 'windows', creating the illusion of flickering flames in some, and the symbolic image of a stained glass window in another. Her marbles, all handmade and handblown by Roxas, glitter handsomely in the light of the kitchen as she worked. The little girl smiles proudly to herself, and her daddy smiles back as he leans against the counter, content to watch as she scurries around her castle and places dolls, soldiers, and teddy bears in strategic locations.

Xion is a master of design, and the castle towers far above her. The lady of its walls crouches by a little tower, only to her knee, and places her final block on its top. She raises her head up and mutters to herself, clapping her hands together in a ritualistic spell.

She puts a little angel at the highest point she could reach. She takes a careful step back, trying not to knock the toys over. It is a few moments before Sora hears his daughter's little prayer, and the tears begin to flow as he hears it. "Please let Auntie Naminé and Uncle Roxas be sad no more, Kingdom Hearts." Xion's soft voice begs as she bows her head respectfully at the castle.

And now Sora recognizes the castle._ "Once there was a land full of light, where everyone was happy."_ Xion had built her own.

The toddler puts her hand on the angel and touches its blond hair in a clumsy little pat. She pulls it down again and hugs it close. "Please don't be sad no more, auntie. I love you." Xion puts it back into its spot and then picks up a soldier. Its little key-shaped weapon dangles from her hand as she sticks the soldier onto the highest wall with the angel. "No more crying, Uncle Roxas. Protect Auntie-" She tells it before suddenly turning around, staring up at her daddy in confusion.

Sora stares at her, having no idea what the heck alerted her to his presence since he was being absolutely quiet. He hadn't so much as chuckled, and had only let out a few tears when he saw the way that his little girl was treating the gifts from her family. Sure enough, when he peers over her shoulder, he sees enough dolls to represent all of them.

The doll with silver hair is at the bottom of one of the towers, its sword raised up above its head in a mock battle stance. Riku. Besides it sit two more, the boy with dark brown hair and the girl with bright red. Him and Kairi. He looks up at the angel and the soldier she had placed on one of the bigger walls. Naminé and Roxas. Axel, who was some reason a giant red teddy bear, is holding a tiny black haired girl in its plush arms.

Her whole family is there, and Xion is unafraid of any of them.

Xion looks at her daddy, a faint blush present on her cheeks. The child looks older for a moment, giving Sora a hint of what she might look like when she was a teenager and yes, she looks just like Kairi. Just like Naminé. Sora walks forward and bundles her into his arms, holding her close and kissing the top of her head. The soft downy black hair tickles his lips and smells of the sweet strawberry shampoo Kairi used.

His little girl. Oh, his sweet little girl.

Xion wraps her arms around her daddy's neck and he stands up again, not sure when he had crouched down. Tears flow down his cheeks but he remains smiling. The little girl runs her hand over Sora's cheeks and wipes them dry as best she can with her sleeve. "Why are you crying?" She asks in confusion, obviously confused since her daddy is smiling.

Sora chuckles and snuggles in close, holding her to his heart. For a moment, father's and child's hearts beat in unison, the combined thump a sweet and strong melody. "I love you, Xion. That's why I'm crying." He says honestly as he closes his eyes and imagines the life his baby would have thanks to all the efforts of the people she had represented in her castle. Kingdom Hearts, the land of light and happiness, would one day come true for her. Xion would never want for anything, despite how limited Sora's resources were.

She had love.

That was all that mattered.

Xion snuggles into her daddy's chest and smiles, still looking confused. She runs her hands into Sora's tangled brown spikes and starts smoothing them apart, a familiar ritual for both of them. "Why? Did I make you sad?" She asks innocently as she untangles a knot in his hair carefully. Sora shakes his head. "No. I'm happy, Xion. That's why I'm crying."

She frowns. "You can cry when you're _happy_?" Xion asks, scrunching her face into an unreadable pout of confusion. Her father nods and leans his head on her shoulder. Xion pauses for a moment before smiling and kissing her daddy on the forehead. The brush of the toddler's lips, though sticky from the strawberry jelly sandwich she had eaten for lunch a few minutes before, are warm and soothing. "I love you, too, Daddy." She says as she hugs him, feeling the ba-dump, ba-dump of his heart against her body.

Sora hugs her close, and murmurs the three words back to her, cuddling with his little girl with all of the love he normally kept hidden out of the illogical fear that someone would make fun of him for showing how much he cared. Sora runs his fingers through Xion's cropped black hair, parting it gently in between his fingers as he kisses her forehead again. That is when he makes his final promise to her, and he whispers it to her. The child looks confused but she smiles, acknowledging the love that her daddy was showing it, even if it makes no sense in her mind.

He would never let her get hurt again.


	12. Chapter 12: A Child's Words

**A Child's Words**

Xion looks at the lady in front of her and says nothing, too scared to tell her anything. She doesn't understand the questions she had asked her, but from the expressions on her parents' faces, she knows they are not Good Questions. She does not understand them, but they are Not Good. Her mommy and daddy look scared, and so the three year old buries her face into the soft plush fur of her teddy bear Axelimus, too frightened to look at the scary woman.

The lawyer glances up at Sora and Kairi, begging for help here. Xion just whimpers and hides her face more, breathing in the smell of the bear as Sora very gently pulls her from the witness stand and starts rocking her in his arms. She whimpers again, the high-pitched noise echoing throughout the courtroom as the defense gives the parents a pair of disapproving and unamused glares. "Have we finished with the accusations against my client?" The man demands, looking very annoyed by the delay. The "star witness" continues to cry, not understanding why everyone was looking at her funny or why her mommy was crying.

Kairi keeps crying, trying to disguise the tears in her eyes. She shakes her head. "No, we're not." She says in a defiant voice as she stands up. Xion looks at her mommy and holds her arms out to her, whimpering in the way that only very little kids could, a cross between snorting and full-out screaming. The mommy immediately runs across the room and hugs the little girl, gently stroking her black hair and combing it between her fingers.

"No, Xion, it's okay... we just need you to tell them, okay? Do you remember what you told us?" She says in a quiet voice, peering over her shoulder secretly at Riku. As usual, he is completely quiet, though he looks enraged. He tries to stand up when Xion looks in his direction but the handcuffs connecting him to the table don't allow him enough room to get up more than a few centimeters from his chair.

Riku looks down at the handcuffs with a malice that is normally only reserved for the most despicable of things, and he looks up at Xion with a barely disguised want.

The want is cruel, and absolute. It seems to fill him up, until Kairi could barely recognize the man he once had been. The kind and gentle soul is gone, replaced by the savage want of her child. Everything good about Riku is either completely gone or distorted, replaced by something she wanted to keep as far away from her family as possible.

Xion looks up at her mommy and then at her daddy, the tears slowly winding down her cheeks. She thinks about it before nodding. "Yeah... But it's a secret..." She says in a quiet voice, the high-pitched tones delicate and sweet. Kairi's heart falters at the sound and she touches her baby's cheek. Xion looks at Riku again, and the rage intensifies as he looks into the tear-stained face of the little girl. He starts struggling with his handcuffs even harder, to the point that his lawyer grabs his hand in an effort to calm him down.

Xion looks at the woman and nods, showing her that she was going to talk. She wipes at her face with her sleeve and her eyes darken to an almost black color. She looks at the accused and says a sentence that does not go unnoticed by the rest of the courtroom._ 'I'm sorry, Uncle Riku.' _Riku's tears go unnoticed in the courtroom so focused on the child that begins to speak.

At the lawyer's questions and gestures to show how and where the accused had laid his hands, Xion runs her hands down her hips and onto her legs. She presses her cheek with one finger, creating an artificial dimple in it before putting her hand onto her chest. With each new body part that Xion touches, Kairi stiffens and cries harder into Sora's shoulder. The father just holds his wife and trembles, stoic and calm in the face of his child's words.

Riku's eyes fill with tears as the members of the courtroom's expressions slowly turn into ones of horror and disgust. "No..." He says in a quiet voice, causing his lawyer to whip around and stare at him. "That's not... what it meant..."

The little girl plays with the skirt of her little blue dress, looking at the floor as the lawyer turns to the defendant side of the courtroom. Her expression is predatory, though a very different brand than Riku's. "She is under oath. She may be a child, but she knows what happened. Why don't you just confess, Mister Takamura?" She demands, pointing to Xion with an accusing gesture. "You've ruined all chance of her having a normal life. She cries because of you." At these words, Riku flinches as if he had just gotten slapped across the face. His calm facade vanishes and he grits his teeth in a savage snarl.

The defendant's lawyer stands up, slamming his hand onto the table. "Objection! Your Honor, this is a child! She can't even tie her shoes, let alone provide a valid testimony!" He declares, throwing his hands up in a practiced gesture of annoyance. Xion scowls. "Can too tie my shoes! Can too make a testy mony!" She says defiantly, pointing to her red sneakers in emphasis. The lawyer looks dumbfounded for about five seconds before waving his hand in the direction of the little girl in confusion.

Sora grins. "That's my girl!" He cheers loudly, making a few jurors laugh in amusement. They exchange chuckles before looking at Riku and then they let out a startled scream. The accused looks at up at the stand, his hands curled around his handcuffs as tightly as possible. His wrists are covered in the gashes he had inflicted as he struggles to get out of his cuffs. As they watch him, he yanks hard on them, the chain letting out a quiet but very obvious creaking noise. They are bent at a very crooked angle, a sign of the sheer force he was putting into them. Thick blood trickles down his hands, puddling onto the tabletop and he smiles.

Riku smiles and he looks up at Xion. He smiles and reaches for her as the handcuffs begin to break apart.

"No..." They hear him whisper as if to himself. There is a very strange look on his face, one of hunger and of despair. He pulls on the cuffs again and allows the tears to fall from his eyes. They trickle into the blood and turn it a bright rosy pink. "Not your girl, Sora... mine." And he smiles.


	13. Chapter 13: The World of Gray

**The World of Gray**

He doesn't care anymore.

The man allows himself to be led off without a fuss, in fact he barely even looks at his lawyers as the man and woman briskly haul him into a backroom to discuss with each other. He just sits there at the table, his head in his hands and he continues to stare at the bloody mess that are now his wrists. They are soaked in his own blood, and it's almost a pretty little effect as the fluid congeals slowly into the dark red scabs that would heal into scars.

Eventually they would be scars.

Riku closes his eyes, feeling the world become numb around him. Xion had betrayed him. He shakes his head deeper into his hands, pressing his palms into his eyes until he begins to see bursts of color in the darkness. He cups his hands over his eyes, not wanting to see whatever he had become.

No, his heart is broken.

He does not wish to see his broken self, does not wish to see what had happened to the love he once shared with his friends, and he does not want to look over into the chair next to his and see the empty space where someone should be. His friends should be there with him. They are not; instead they are with that fool Axel and that little bastard Roxas, comforting them when they should be in here with him.

His heart twists inside of his chest, and he lets out a soft exhale as the colors from the pressure over his eyes start to intensify. They swirl in his vision, twisting and turning and shifting into all sorts of bright and pretty colors. If he had been an artist, Riku might have been tempted to sketch them out or to paint them into existence. But he wasn't one, and so he continues to stare into the empty space behind his eyes and to empty his heart out bit by bit.

They had betrayed him.

The pressure on his eyes begins to hurt, and the colors slowly fade to gray. With the air of a man condemned to and walking towards the gallows for a wrongful crime, Riku lets go of his eyes. And he quietly stabs his right index finger into his right eye and gouges it out.


	14. Chapter 14: Light In the Darkness

**Light In the Darkness**

The two men look at the little girl as she busies herself with a handful of teddy bears, watching her as she scurries around beneath their legs and placing random ones on their shoes. Axel tears his gaze away from her long enough to look at her father and mutter the most vicious curse he's ever said in his life with enough venom to kill thirty people.

Kairi looks up and growls. "Axel!" She snaps at her cousin, pointing to her daughter as the toddler looks up in confusion. For a moment, the two stare at each other, emerald meeting sapphire in a look of solemnity. There is an entire world enveloped in their gaze, the moments that they have shared together, the number of birthday parties the child had completed on Axel's shoulders. There are the moments when Axel had personally punished her for some small wrong and the days he had rewarded her with a treat when she had done something well.

Along with Riku, Roxas, Naminé, and her parents, Axel is one of the few people on the island that Xion can trust with all of her being.

Xion just nods at the older man before popping her thumb into her mouth and going back to hiding her animals among the shoes. Axel looks at Kairi as if asking her what to do now, and he gives her an amused shrug. "Looks like she doesn't have a problem with it!" He says in a singsong voice to his little cousin, reaching out and ruffling her fringe teasingly. She immediately slaps him with a smack with the same air of a lion tamer flicking a whip at an unruly beast. Kairi only sighs and drops her head onto the table, muttering something about how unlucky she was to be trapped with such a goofball of a cousin.

But she is still smiling, and that was the effect that Axel had been going for.

Sora puts his coffee mug down on the table with a soft clink, and Roxas looks up from his own mug of chocolate. The two remain silent as Kairi and Axel squabble for a few more minutes, neither of them moving as Kairi threatens to pour a mug of hot coffee down somewhere it would hurt. They don't even laugh when Axel pins her to the table with her own sweater, and laughs maniacally in a way only very stereotypical super villains on TV did. Xion claps her hands together and mimics the laugh but the two men just sigh.

"Don't swear in front of Xion." They say in freakishly similar monotone voices, making the cousins stop fighting long enough to stare at them. Despite how they aren't related in the least, they both have the same expression, one of loss and sheer anger. They both clutch at their mugs as if it personally had broken them, and Roxas is twitching in a way that showed the Hikari family members that he was enraged. Sora on the other hand is completely still and his rage only showed in his eyes, buried in a place that no one would see unless they knew him very well.

They look in that instant like brothers and truly, they knew the other one's pain much better than anyone else.

In unison, Sora and Roxas lift their heads. Despair grips them both before they smooth their faces into neutral smiles. Roxas clears his throat softly, folding his hands neatly on his lap. "We need to talk... about Riku." He says to Kairi who freezes at the sound of the name. The woman turns pale but nods weakly, allowing herself to collapse into a chair besides her cousin. True to his warm nature, Axel wraps his arm around her waist to keep her steady and to give her a little comfort. Roxas bows his head and looks into the depths of his mug as if it held the answers to all of his problems. "We need to keep Riku away from Xion. Or else I'm going to kill him. I'm going to strangle the punk with his own intestines if he touches that little girl again."

Even when speaking about murder, Roxas is so matter-of-fact that it's almost spooky.

Sora nods, putting his hand over Roxas's shoulder. "A bit dramatic... but true enough," He says in a voice that would have passed for amusement if he hadn't been shaking in sheer rage. The idea of Riku... his best friend... and his daughter... Sora shakes his head and grits his teeth in a firm scowl. "We need to protect Xion. So I suggest we move to Twilight Town with Axel."

Axel jumps. "HEY!" He says in a startled way, obviously surprised that they would want to move in with him. Xion looks up when he yells and toddles over to drop the last teddy bear in his lap, carefully arranging it to face his stomach. She holds her arms up expectantly and smiles in a sweet way. Automatically, he scoops her up and cuddles with her, his protective instincts going on immediate overdrive. "I mean... yeah, I'll let you guys bunk with me while you find a place... but geez, can't you ask me first?" He demands, looking a little hurt by the rough treatment. Xion snuggles into his lap, knowing better than to interrupt when the grown-ups were talking.

Sora sighs. "It's just for a week or two, til we get everything moved in at the studio. It's big enough for all four of us, anyway." He says and he looks in Roxas's direction for a moment. Technically speaking, it is now his property. Both he and Naminé signed the papers for it, and now Roxas is the one living owner. As if reading his thoughts, Roxas just nods. "She would have wanted you to stay with us." He says in a final sort of voice, as if telling them they had no choice in the matter.

And really, they don't. Four years was nothing to Riku. He had waited much longer in an attempt to woo and date Kairi, before he'd willingly given her up when he noticed that Sora was much happier with her. In only about four years, he'd be released and he'd be free to run after their little girl all he wanted.

Sora and Kairi both nod in agreement as Axel bounces Xion on his knee, carefully holding the toddler so she wouldn't tumble off of his leg and smack into the table. She cries out in cheerful amusement, waving an imaginary hat around her hand as she whoops. Roxas's expression softens slightly. "No problem." He says, cutting off the couple's thank you's in mid-breath. "Anything for her." Roxas murmurs as he reaches out to the little girl and places his hand onto her head.

She stops whooping immediately, instead choosing to look up at her foster uncle with a strange expression on her face. There is a mixture of the expressions of an older child and that of an infant in her eyes, a combination of youth and wisdom and it almost disturbs the grownups around her. Xion's face is almost completely blank as she puts her hands on top of her uncle. Roxas blinks in mild surprise. Xion wraps her entire hand around the man's index finger and closes those solemn eyes in silent contemplation before she speaks out loud.

"I love you, Uncle Roxas."

In response, he only smiles and the little girl smiles back at him. For a moment, their hands remain connected in that solemn way, like a vow was being made between them. What it was, it could not be said, for that is between the pair of serendipitous souls what was said so silently between them. What is sure is that it was a promise, and Roxas had decided to keep living if only to see that smile again.

He could see Naminé in that little smile. That same innocence and sweetness are there inside of that child. He knows that he would be there for her in any kind of situation, in any kind of weather, just so he could protect the girl that was like a daughter to him. And it made him want to keep living, if only to make sure that wherever his love was, she would see him... and still be proud of him.

Until that day. Until the day he could go join her, Roxas would remain with this child and he would love her just as much as he did at that moment and he would help raise her into the strong-willed adult that he knew any child of Sora's would become. He had found his light again.


	15. Chapter 15: Dreams Of A Lover

**Dreams Of A Lover**

As Kairi pulls a blanket over his still form, Roxas can barely feel the way that she touches her lips to his forehead. It is the same kind of kiss that someone had given him so very long ago, a motherly kiss full of love and of the sweet gentleness that almost all kind girls held. In his sleep, he shifts his body around the toddler sleeping so peacefully in his arms.

He sleeps with his jacket on, though so obviously not for warmth. But no one questions his decision to wear that white and black jacket, so heavily laid with the scent of someone he loved. They instead allow the pair to sleep and move their conversation to another room, leaving the pair behind to doze. They know he is not Riku, and that his love for the child is the same love he would have given any of his children had she survived to give them to him.

Roxas unconsciously snuggles into Xion's warm little body, using her as a miniature heater. The little girl doesn't mind and cuddles in too, seeking the same warmth from her new foster father. He wraps his arms around her as he dreams of someone, as he runs towards the girl running away from him. She is the sunshine of his life, and she calls out to him, pressing the small notebook in her hands to her chest. Her smile is bright and warm, and Roxas is intoxicated with the sheer pleasure of seeing it. The tears trickle down his cheeks and he cries in his sleep, calling out in the darkness for her to come back, for her to wait for him and to slow down.

As he sleeps, the jacket sleeves slide up his arms, revealing the thick layers of gauze on his wrists.


	16. Chapter 16: Playing

**Playing**

As he walks down the corridor, Riku's gaze is firmly on his legs. They walk slowly, almost fluidly, as if they weren't attached to him at all. He is walking without thinking, and the revelation that he could surprises the man. He hadn't known he could do this, and quite frankly, his shattered mind couldn't have been more impressed with himself than if he had suddenly sprouted wings and began to fly. It is like discovering a phantom limb that he hadn't noticed he had, odd and strangely beautiful. Riku is beautiful, and the discovery leaves him speechless. In comparison to the smooth way that his limbs worked together, the guard that was leading him from the isolation ward is much clumsy and comical, as if his body hadn't been made of the right pieces like Riku's had.

Even with his head covered in bandages, with his right eye aching like he had poured battery acid into his socket, Riku is still marveling at his body. How could he have not known he moved like this, this delicate, long steps taking him wherever he went? The only thing he could think of that was better was having Xion holding his hand and swinging her little hand as they walked in the park... yes... Riku's eye narrows as the tears threaten to trickle down his face. Yes, he would have to do something about how Sora and Kairi had taken Xion away from him.

He could do so many things about that.

A loud jarring noise comes from one of the cells ahead of them as an inmates throws himself against the bars, screaming his head off and sending the noise vibrating throughout the corridor. The echo enhances the man's guttural voice and Riku can tell what he's saying perfectly. "'Ere, preddy boi! 'Ere, preddy boi! Think chu's so tough behind 'ere? Think chu's so big rapin' a little girl? C'mere and I'll show ya what being a man is 'bout!" The man sneers as he rattles the bars as best as he could, laughing in an almost enraged way as the little entourage passes by his cell.

For a moment, Riku actually stops. He stops and looks into the cell, looking at the man's big ugly face as calmly as he would have one of the paintings he used to evaluate to put up in Destiny Studio. He observes the way that the bastard's face bulges out of his skull, the grotesque fat that turned his body into a round shape that he hadn't thought existed outside of a coloring book. The orange jumpsuit clings to this man's body, as if he was a fat little chunk of cheese wrapped up in pretty paper.

Riku feels his lips curve up into a smile, and he leans into the cell lazily, watching as the man backs up in surprise, obviously not having expected his challenge to have been accepted. Without even thinking about it, Riku threads his arm through one of the slits in the bars and very lightly touches the other inmate on the chest. He smirks and pulls him closer, forcibly dragging him to the bars. The man struggles slightly but allows it for some reason, moving forward as eagerly as a puppy would to a new master. Riku's fingers spiral down delicately down that chest, feeling how hard it was from the sheer amount of fat that coated his flesh.

The man shivers at Riku's touch and a faint blush appears on his face, almost as if he liked what was happening. He closes his eyes, both startled and lost in the touch. The guard looked freaked out but doesn't intervene. Riku's unbandaged eye looks at the man with a fair amount of sheer distaste and annoyance but his hand keeps moving up his body as if he was touching a lover. Then his long fingers precisely moved their way up to the man's throat, and wrap themselves around the man's neck. With a gesture that could easily mean either irritation or just plain boredom, a little shrug of his shoulders, Riku slams the man's head into the bars with enough force with make the bars bend forward from the weight of that little fat bastard.

The guard immediately grabs Riku by the arm and starts walking faster, his formerly timid little steps elongating until he is almost running from how quickly he was trying to get Riku down the corridor. Having nothing better to do, Riku follows but throws a glance over his shoulder at the screeching man that was promising to _'git 'im if it's dah last ting I do!' _and smiles as he raises his middle finger up, waggles it tauntingly, and keeps moving down the hallway to the infirmary.

Sometimes you just had to find your own entertainment to keep your mind off of things.


	17. Chapter 17: Just In Case

**Just in Case**

Xion looks up at her daddy, her brow furrowed in silent concentration as she looks at the man in white before her. The man smiles nervously, fiddling with a stethoscope around his neck before checking his stack of papers again. "Um... Xion Minami?" He says again as he looks down at the little girl. Xion shrivels up into Sora's leg, not understanding the strange look in the man's eyes. It is a look of great pity, pity for something the little girl could not understand, and one of very detached sorrow. Xion clings to her daddy's leg, hiding behind him even as he begins to stand up.

Sora scratches his nose with one finger and lets out a long breath before nodding at the man. He gives a helpless shrug at the patient nurse, who barely looked older than Sora himself, before dragging the leg that had his daughter holding onto it forward. "That's... us..." He says softly, his shoulders drooping slightly as Xion buries her face in his calf. He rolls his eyes, trembling slightly as the medical professional holds the door open for him. "Just... gimme a second, okay?" He tells the kid in a quiet voice as he bends over and pries her clinging fingertips from his legs long enough to scoop the little girl up in his arms. Automatically, though she begins to cling to Sora's chest instead of his leg, Xion peeks over her daddy's shoulder at her relatives in the waiting room.

With identically neutral and calm smiles, Roxas and Axel wave to her over their magazines, each one hiding the anger and the pain of having to be there for this reason and for this little girl. The pages shake in their hands as the toddler waves back, giving them a bright smile even though they had totally lied to her about where they were going to get her here without complaints.

After all, who the hell ever wanted to go to a doctor's office to test a child?

Xion waves at her uncles as Sora goes through the door after the nurse, his heavy footsteps landing on the shadow of the nurse's beneath the fluorescent lights. The shadows of the caregivers and the child about to receive her care stretch far behind them, like another set of themselves was walking on their heels to make sure that they reached their location safely. With a quiet sigh, one that was almost completely hidden by the panicked whimpers of the little girl as she slowly began to realize that she was once again on the way to see a doctor, Sora gently swings his daughter up to his shoulders, settling her on them in a way that would keep her dress's skirt from riding up too badly.

The little girl blinks once and buries her face into her dad's hair, letting out another little cry that only a very small child or baby animal could make. It is a heartrending sound, one of complete isolation and pure utter fear. This is the noise you would expect a lost baby would make when it understands somewhere in its primitive mind that safety is completely gone, that soon it would begin to die and there is absolutely nothing to keep it from doing so. Xion is terrified, and it is with every scared, worried cell in her daddy's body that he wants to give her the comfort she needs. But he himself is scared, the kind of scared of a parent who has no idea what to expect nor what even to think about the experience they are about to have. No, Sora cannot comfort her, for he is not the one who will actually have this experience. He is only an observer, and one who wasn't even sure he'd get the luxury of being able to hold his baby's hand at that. The only one who could tell her is sitting on Sora's shoulders, crying because she is terrified of getting a shot and because her regular doctor usually has lots of brightly-colored lollipops and bandages with kittens and puppies and all sorts of animals on them to cover up her boo-boos.

This is a very different place from that little clinic where everyone knows each other by name, when they are alarmed when a patient comes in without an appointment because the nurses know by heart when to expect them, and where they are actually afraid for their young clients as if they are their own children. This place is cold and impersonal, with patients being rushed up and down the hallways as easily as one would throw something into a grocery cart or take something out of one. The nurses are not the sweet-faced specimens that are now showing Sora and Xion into this hospital, but rather the jaded ones with the guarded expressions holding onto patients' hands and sometimes hair as if annoyed (or hoping) that they might make a run for it.

Xion wraps her hands onto one of Sora's hair spikes, clinging to it as if holding it would give her a weapon to use against the scary nurses. Her little body trembles as one particularly gruff looking nurse shoves a girl a little younger than Sora past them, barely catching her when she stumbles on something and almost falls over. The girl hangs limply in the nurse's huge arms as if every last bones in her body had been ripped out of her and replaced by jelly, she just seemed so...

"Lifeless..." Sora murmurs to himself as he wraps his hands around Xion's ankles, making sure that his little girl didn't tumble from his shoulders. The nurse looks over and adjusts his glasses with one hand, sliding the chunky black frames up his nose carefully. "Well, this is also a psychiatric hospital... we're the only ones who can do the test you want for Xion, um, Mister Minami." The young nurse says in a quiet voice, taking a peek up at the child on his shoulders. Xion sniffs sharply as she looks down at the man, observing her with suspicious little eyes before cracking a big white-toothed grin. Briefly, the child looks just so plain happy that it is impossible to reconcile this image of the toddler with the shaking little mess that she had been about five seconds ago.

Sora nods solemnly, his blue eyes briefly darkening to a much deeper shade. "Yes, I understand. But... I'd like the news now, so I can... decide when to tell her." He mumbles the last words to himself with an enraged expression that looks out of place on the normally cheerful brunet's face, as if someone else's face had been momentarily transplanted onto his for just long enough for the most violent look of hatred that the man had ever made in his life to drift across it. Xion looks down at her daddy, her eyes blinking rapidly in mild concern as Sora stops when the nurse does in front of a door. With a sweep of his arm, like a beauty queen announcing the grand prize in one of the trashy game-shows that Sora liked to watch with Xion on TV, the nurse says the doctor's name and asks Sora to step inside.

The woman looks up briefly when the father and daughter come in but she quickly ignores them again, instead choosing to flip through some papers in her hands. She is stiff in her chair, obviously unsure about how to deal with a patient this young or so well-known in her community. Yes, Xion's case had been broadcast on nearly every radio and television station on Destiny Islands since the day that they presented the new charge against Riku Takamura, and you'd have to be someone living under a rock not to have heard the case of the poor child. She taps her foot in the air lightly as she reviews the papers that the little girl's family doctor had given her, knowing that the girl was in the peak of health. Well, as healthy as a three, almost four year old could be.

She finally manages to get her turmoil of emotions in check long enough to give them a curt, no nonsense smile and to wave them both into her office. In response, Sora immediately swings Xion off of his shoulders, briefly hugging the girl as she's looped around his body in a circle motion before being dropped to the floor. The little girl's dark blue eyes peer up at the doctor's green ones briefly before she toddles into one of the chairs and begins the arduous process of pulling herself into it.

Of the people in this room, she is the only one unaware of the tests about to begin on her.


	18. Chapter 18: Awake

**Awake**

He could feel them. Yes, feel them... The bound fingertips in their bandages flex automatically as he sleeps, testing whether or not they could still move. The flurry of movement, quick and almost imperceptible to the doctors' trained eyes, dances onto his pillow case even as the gauze is slowly unwound from his face. Riku should be unconscious. And somehow he isn't, having stayed awake long enough to know what had happened to him in his sleep.

_'Yes, he's waking up... the operation was a success...'_

Yes. Now he remembers. He remembers vaguely that his lawyers had given permission for him to have some sort of surgery, something to fix him to let him have a nicer appearance for court. He had agreed... why had he agreed...?

The touch of the doctor's hands on his face is gentle, caring almost in a strange way. If Riku could have moved, he might have nuzzled into the caress like a dog into its master's embrace. But instead, his right eye closes completely as the doctor removes his bandages. Yes, he could feel it there. His long lashes flutter over his left eye, but the right one wouldn't work properly yet, having been sedated for so long. He would never know why the medical professionals had decided to go ahead with the transplant but he knows that the result might change his life forever. Yes, even with his eyes closed, Riku knows that he had seen something out of that eye. He had plucked it out himself but now... yes... He opens his right eye as the doctor neatly snips away a festering pus-soaked bit of gauze and dabs some medicated lotion, cold lotion that smelled both of a sweetness and of alcohol, just at the corner of his eye. The lotion stings slightly but the teeny amount of pain is worth so much more as Riku sees the world briefly as a swirl of color in that once lost eye.

Yes... he remembers... Riku's fingers flex into his pillow, clutching at it with the same intensity that he would have had if he was holding a little child's hands. Yes, it was so she wouldn't be afraid. So they wouldn't be afraid anymore... so that they would forgive him...

He smiles, and the golden eye glitters delicately in the fluorescent light of the infirmary ward before being smothered by pristine and clean white bandages once more.


	19. Chapter 19: Pity

**Pity**

There was something funny in everyone else's eyes. As she toddles off obediently to the doctor waiting for her at the doorway, there is something strange in everyone's eyes. Xion looks around her surroundings carefully, with the same air that someone accused of a crime might have done. Her dark blue eyes fill with tears as she wraps her hand slowly around the doctor's fingers, allowing the young lady to scoop her up in her arms and to begin walking down the hallway.

Her father watches her as she goes, and when Xion raises her hand up past her head to wave bye bye to him, she sees the same funny thing in his expression. She had never seen that look in his eyes before, that same sad and lonely little look that he gives her as his lips curl up into a smile and he waves back to her. Sora looks as if he is smiling, as if he is happy, but even his three year old daughter can peer into his heart and see the truth. Xion leans her head against the doctor's shoulder, taking in a slow breath as the woman takes her away and closes her eyes.

There is something different... and she doesn't understand what it is.


	20. Chapter 20: Just One Look

**Just One Look**

As she carries the little girl to her tiny bunk bed, Kairi tucks Xion's head just under her chin, allowing herself a moment to just feel the child in her arms. Much like her father, Xion feels warm and almost soothing in a way, though that was probably an effect of just having her safe at home. Either way, the child's heart beats in a way that makes her mother smile as she gently places her onto the bed and pulls her red and pink blanket over her body.

Xion dozes through this little process, only accenting her sleep with a soft mewl that sounded like it had come from a baby kitten when Kairi's gentle hand tucks the blanket beneath her chin. At hearing the sound, Kairi chuckles under her breath and lays a kiss on her baby's cheek, briefly snuggling her cheek against hers and getting another little new for her trouble.

She feels a warm arm circle around her waist and pull her in into another body and once again, Kairi can't help but chuckle. She lifts her head to see Sora watching her, a strange sort of smile playing on his lips as he gives her an amused little wink. As if responding to some unsaid prompt from her husband, Kairi slips her fingers in between his, straightening up just as he pulls her into his chest, cuddling with her just as she had with their daughter. He briefly flicks his fingers against the top of her hand before settling them perfectly in between the spaces of her fingers, and from the pleased look in his eyes, he knows that they were an exact fit.

The couple leans against each other, Kairi's head resting on Sora's chest, as they watch their little girl sleep peacefully with her teddy bear in her arms. They stand there for a few moments before Kairi finally pulls away in order to tuck the bear into the blanket so it wouldn't tumble out of Xion's arms. The moment that her hands touch the blanket however, Sora once again wraps his arm around her waist and picks her up, placing his head on her shoulder and inhaling deeply as he begins to walk towards the door. Kairi lets out a soft cry of protest, wiggling in her husband's arms as he begins to carry her out of the room. Since when is being carried like a princess part of the marriage deal?

The bear slaps Sora in the back of his head as it's flung past him, making him freeze in his tracks and look over his shoulder. Little Xion blinks sleepily, a grouchy expression that would have made her parents run for some coffee if she had been older. "I wanna play too." She demands in a pouting voice before she blinks and sinks back onto her blanket, immediately being knocked out the moment her head lands on the TV character patterned pillow.

Sora and Kairi only have to look at each other before they burst out laughing.


	21. Chapter 21: Time

**Time**

Four years.

The words don't mean anything to him, they are nothing but a jumble of letters. Four years. F. O. U. R. He grips at his aching eye as the verdict is read out to him, feeling nothing except that sick pain in what used to be his right eye. It hurts, it hurt beyond anything that the doctors could have warned him about and beyond anything that painkillers could dull away.

Riku says nothing when they tell him he would be in jail for another four years, he doesn't even react when the guard slides his hands into his arms and drags him forcibly to his feet. He feels nothing but numbness, nothing but a coldness inside of him that made his eyes dull and his footsteps slow. Four years at Destiny Island Prison for the Criminally Ill. Four years in an asylum for the true nutcases, four years without the people he loved.

Four years without Xion and Sora and Kairi.

At the direction of the guard and the psychologist that had been assigned to his case, Riku plods on into the courthouse and into the little room that he would wait in to go back to Destiny Island Penitentiary. He's thrown roughly at a chair, forced to sit in it by the ungentle guard that immediately turned to the psychologist and pulled her out a nice comfortable chair. The hard plastic of the foldable chair feels cold against his back but Riku still doesn't react, not even when the woman began to stare in his direction.

He just buries his face in his hands, refusing to look at anything. There was no point in looking at anything. He had lost. He had lost everything. The tears trickle down his face and burn wherever they hit the orange cloth of his jumpsuit, making him rock himself in that crappy little foldable chair. He wants to go home. He understands what he had done... and he still wanted to go home.

He feels someone looking at him but that doesn't matter to him. He wants to go home and he continues to cling to himself, praying somewhere in the back of his blank mind that he would wake up and that this would all be a dream. He wants to go home, he wants to go home and play with Xion again, to laugh with Sora again, to help Kairi like he always done. His heart aches within his chest and burns with the intensity of wanting to go home and it is all he can do to hold back a scream. He hadn't done it out of hate, out of rage, out of darkness, he had done it out of love. It was love, couldn't they understand that it had all been for love?

"Ain't no point in talking to him right now, miss," He hears the guard tells the psychiatrist in a quiet voice and he hears the soft tutting under his breath as the man tries to convince her to let up with her staring. But she does not say anything and so Riku continues to cry, clutching at his head as the pain in his heart grows worse, until it feels like someone was stabbing him in the heart. The woman says something under her breath but she smiles at Riku anyway, determined to make at least some headway. The guard sighs as the woman begins to move her chair closer to the silent inmate's. "Suit yourself, don't say I didn't warn ya. Guys like him are nothin' but cold fish."

The woman very lightly places her hand onto one of Riku's, making his fingers separate slightly as he continues to clutch at his head. Riku sees a crack of light and she sees a flash of gold beneath those white fingers. She was a very pretty woman, small even. If they had been in any other place, Riku might have approached her and asked her her name. As if listening to his thoughts, the woman quietly introduces herself. "My name is Rayna. I'm here to help you. What's your name?" She asks him in the sort of voice you would use with a very young child, soft and sweet and she slowly wraps her hand around his fingers. It was the voice he had once used on... Riku blinks once as she pulls his hand from his face and begins to watch her suspiciously. What did she want? Was she here to analyze him, break him down into a lot of little boxes and check them off?

Psychopath, bipolar, schizophrenic, was she going to label him into one of these boxes?

But a strange smile slowly crosses his face, his expression softening as he looks at the young woman. "My name... is … Riku." He hears himself saying, allowing her to lower his hands into his lap. Riku looks at her, at Rayna, staring at her childlike form in the neat little suit she had on. She looks young, extremely young... and vulnerable. But he wants to believe her, to believe in what she was telling him. "Can you help me?" He asks, curling his hand around the girl's finger, tightening it when she gets surprised and tries to pull away.

For a moment, the girl doesn't answer. But after a moment or two of silence, her head slowly nods and her hand relaxes into Riku's grip. As if it had been built to fit there.

Riku smiles and wraps his hand around hers properly, listening as she begins to speak to him and explain exactly what they were going to do at the hospital he was going to be living in from now on.


	22. Chapter 22: Passing

**Passing**

Xion never understood the looks that people gave her after Uncle Riku went away. She never understood why people smiled at her and gave her things and treated her different. She just understood that it was her fault.

_'If you tell anyone, then I'll have to go away. You'll never see me again and I won't be able to protect you anymore. You'll be all alone and no one will ever protect you again. I love you, Xion. Don't you love me? If you do, don't make me go away.'_

Uncle Riku had been right, like he always was. He did go away, despite how much Xion cared about him. The things he did had been weird sometimes, like when he kissed her or held her too tight in his arms. She had never liked that. But she had tolerated it because she didn't want to lose her friend. To lose her daddy's friend. Her mommy's friend. Riku was important to her and her family and she didn't want to lose him like she lost Auntie Naminé.

Xion looks up at her mother as Kairi sobs into a handful of tissues and she longs to wipe at her mommy's face with them. She wants to help clean her up but she remains quiet because the preacher was talking. She sits up perfectly straight and puts her hand on her mouth, keeping it there as the man in the front of the church continues talking about the box behind him. His hands wave in the air as he talks, like he was about to start flying in the middle of his speech. Xion giggles at the image of the serious man beginning to fly like a bird but immediately shuts up when people turn around to look at her.

Like she had been taught to do, Xion puts on a perfectly serious face and screws up her mouth like she was about to start wailing to leave. From his place next to her, Axel immediately stabs his finger into her stomach and puts his finger to his lips when she looks up at him. She scowls but remains quiet at his not so subtle insistence. When the little girl shows enough solemnity for the ceremony to suit his desires, Axel's sharp gaze turns back onto the front of the room. The preacher keeps talking, gesturing at the box as he spoke.

"She was a dear friend, taken from us far before her time. But she will remain in our hearts, bound by the chains of memory that keep us together and in that she will live on..."

Xion doesn't understand what he meant. What chain? She had a chain in her heart? She looks down at her chest but she sees nothing on it, nothing protruding from her heart like the man was saying. All she knows is that he was talking about her auntie, like she was in the room. The child frowns, listening more closely to the words with a troubled heart. Gone. He keeps saying that Auntie Naminé was gone.

Gone like Riku?

The word 'dead' comes from the older man's lips, making Xion frown even more. Dead... She focuses on that word, not understanding its meaning. Dead. What did being dead mean? Did being dead mean you couldn't come back? Was Riku dead? Did she end up forcing her uncle to be dead? She didn't understand what death meant, she could only remember the old smiles on her family's faces, that she had had two more people in her family before, and that two of her friends were gone.

She feels a little tug on her arm, the beginning of her mother pulling her up to her feet. Xion looks up at her and sees the sad smile on her mother's face, the way that tears kept trickling down her pale cheeks. "Come on," Kairi says softly, tugging again at her arm as the others in their pews begin to get up. "We're going to go leave a flower for Naminé. You want her to get your flower, right, Xion?"

Xion blinks at her mother before allowing her to make her stand, then obediently takes her hand. She did want to leave her flower for her auntie. Her mommy had helped her pick it out from the thousands of flowers in the flower-shop. It was a beautiful little rose with delicate white petals that reminded her of the white dress that her auntie always wore, the way that she always seemed to have some sort of white candy for her in the shop, and the way that the little white figure looked like beside the black of her Uncle Roxas. They had always looked so happy together, even if they were fighting. They just looked right beside each other.

Without another word, Kairi pulls her child down the pew to join the group of people lining up before the coffin.


	23. Chapter 23: Hating You

**Chapter 23: Hating You**

They had very different upbringings.

The little girl knew love at the hands of her relatives, knowing nothing more than smiles and a strict protectiveness from the men and women she loved. But the little boy's life was something very different. He had never known love, not once in his three year old life had he known something as gentle as that.

He only knew how to get out of the way of grown-ups, that they couldn't be trusted. That a gentle hand was more likely to come with a slap for being the child of someone he had never met.

His father was someone he had never met. His mother was someone who regretted his existence for he was nothing more than a very big and very costly mistake for her. But he still lived in luxury, if only because his mother liked to put on appearances for the neighbors and for his grandmother. His grandmother liked him well enough and often sent him little presents to distract his mind from the fact that his mother hated him. He was the proud owner of an electric train set that really ran on its tracks, several dozen platoons of soldiers to command, an armada of boats that could really float.

But he had no one to show them to, he had no one to play with them with, he had no one that would want to be the friend of a rapist's son.

And so he had learned to hate the little girl, because she had something he didn't have. Even if he didn't know what it was. His mother was fond of pointing that out to him, that the little girl who knew his father was much happier than he was. Haru longed to know his father too, but he didn't know where to find him. He didn't know where he lived, and at three years old, he wouldn't have been able to find out. So the little boy dreamed about him, dreamed about a kind father that would give him the attention that his mother never gave him. Someone to play with his train, his soldiers, his boats. Someone who would pat him on the head for being smart and tell him the words only his grandmother bothered to tell him. Someone who would love him. Someone who wouldn't think him a mistake.

He had never met Xion Minami. It had been three years since she had known his father. But Haru Takamura, the bastard child of Riku Takamura, knew enough to hate her with everything he had.


	24. Chapter 24: Girl Changed

**Girl Changed**

Just a few more minutes.

Just a few more minutes and she would be free.

Xion fidgets in her small desk, her seven year old mind trying to figure out a way to get time moving that much faster. But the clock above the teacher's head keeps ticking on slowly, painfully slowly as the rest of the Twilight Academy School for Girls pupils giggle to themselves and as the teacher writes on the chalkboard.

Just another couple minutes and she could go home.

As she dutifully writes down the homework assignment in the little red agenda that her father had given her, Xion knows that there was something wrong. Every so often, one of the other girls would turn to look at her, to give her a knowing look before turning back around and laughing to another girl. Nearly every girl in this school had a group of friends to laugh with, to play with, and to make fun of others with.

Xion was not one of those girls.

Her face turns hot, a sure sign that she was blushing and that she was about to cry. Tears prickle in the little girl's eyes as she keeps her gaze locked firmly on the back of the teacher. She memorizes every last detail of her Mathematics professor, down to the black ribbon around the brim of the large hat he insisted on wearing everywhere. But she keeps writing down what he was saying, putting a neat little number 78 where her agenda said math so she would remember to do the assignment on that page later on with her dad and with her uncles.

But the girls keep turning around to look at her.

They keep staring at her and laughing in a not so secretive way.

She had always been laughed at. She couldn't remember a day where she hadn't been laughed at by someone else, teased by someone else for liking to read books a lot more than playing with the dolls that the rest of the class seemed to adore. Whenever she did play with dolls, she had been criticized for making them go on adventures instead of going to a house and partying or playing house. Xion had never liked parties, she didn't like playing house, she hated dresses, and she hated clowns. But everyone else did like those things. She had been made fun of for liking something different.

For being different.

Xion fidgets nervously with her pencil, shrinking under the judging stare of her classmates, sure that every single one of them wanted to get her. They didn't like her. Flipping her math book to the right page, she carefully slips a bookmark in between its pages, praying that the bell would ring and that no one would talk to her. The words that she longed to say burn on her tongue like acid, words like 'leave me alone' or 'You're a stupid jerk' or 'You don't scare me' threaten to tumble from her lips and shock her classmates into silent submission.

Or at least, she hoped that they would.

The teacher turns around and taps the blackboard with his chalk, giving the group of girls under his charge a big smile. "Alright, girls! Page seventy eight and do problems one to ten! Be sure to make sure that you use the multiplication tables that we made in class earlier if you get stuck, okay?" He says in a loud voice, giving the kids a cheerful wink as they start gathering their things to leave.

Xion is the first out of her seat, the first to have her bundle of papers in her arms, and the first to dash across the room to the little hook-room where they left their backpacks.

Leaving the room of taunting giggles behind her, she quickly hurries to the fourteenth little closet, where her hook was. Their teacher had given it to her with a smile at the beginning of the year, telling her that she wouldn't have to share it with anyone else because there were only twenty seven girls in the class. She was the odd number out, the one that could have her own personal hook rather than sharing it with someone she didn't know. Her partner for activities was Mister Kinneas himself and they typically had a good time together, joking and laughing about TV shows that most of her classmates didn't know existed because they were older than they were.

Xion stares into the closet where she had previously left her red and blue backpack, the place where a very noticeably empty hook was stuck to the back. Her backpack was gone. Someone had taken her backpack. Tears start trickling down her face as the rest of the little girls start trooping in, laughing loudly to each other as they removed their own perfectly safe backpacks from their hooks and shoved their papers into them.

Someone had taken her backpack.

Xion immediately thinks that maybe it had fallen to the floor. That had happened before, sometimes a backpack would be so full of books that it would snap the hook it was hanging on right off of the closet wall and drop it with a loud thud to the floor. But the minute that the thought crosses her mind, she eliminates it as a possibility. Backpacks, particularly her usually full of books one, made too big of a noise to not have heard it drop from the classroom. Mister Kinneas usually ran in to report which one had fallen and to restick the hook back to whatever closet it had been in. Once he had even done it with a piece of gum that he'd had in his mouth because he couldn't find the glue that he normally used. As soon as he put it back, he would usually joke around with the owner of the backpack, teasing them that they had to clean it out before it got bigger than they were.

So it hadn't fallen.

Xion checks the floor anyway, hoping that maybe a bright red and blue backpack covered in Donald Duck stickers and a Goofy keychain would appear magically right before her eyes and she could go home. But she doesn't find anything, nothing but a small clump of gray dust in the corner of her closet. That left only one conclusion.

Someone had taken it.

Xion feels a hand tap her shoulder and she stiffens, knowing that it was one of the girls in her class. A bunch of words immediately recoil in her throat, a sickening mass that made her want to throw up out of sheer fear of speaking. The words choke her, rendering her silent before the attacks of her tormentors and unable to fight back against the ones who mocked her. But this child, whoever it was, only had a single word to say to her. "Bathroom." A low harsh voice whispers to her secretively before the girl darts away, quickly making her retreat before anyone saw that she was talking to Xion, the freak of the class.

The little girl tears up and rubs at her eyes roughly with her sleeve, going to the bathroom door at the end of the hook room. She can feel the remaining girls' stares on her back as she wraps her hand around the handle of the bathroom, gently pulling it down and yanking the door open. She hears a few soft giggles behind cupped hands as she walks into the room, closing it behind her.

One of the stalls was wide open and Xion's heart sinks as she notices what was crammed into the toilet. A mass of books greet her, nothing more now than a soggy clump of blurred words and ruined covers. Her library books. Someone had thrown them into the toilet. Her eyes dart to the sink and she sees the faucet was turned on, soaking the rest of her things beyond any salvageable means.

Someone had thrown her backpack into the sink and run water on it.

Xion sits down on the floor, silently looking at her books and her backpack and the way that someone had torn her Goofy charm right off of its little metal ring and thrown it across the room. All of her stickers are now peeling and ripped, the sticky adhesive the only thing that remained of the careful work of her parents when they put the stickers on them. Xion doesn't bother to cry over the remains of her favorite characters, she doesn't bother to cry because she would have to pay for the books out of her allowance and that the librarian might never trust her again.

She doesn't bother to cry because she knows it would happen again.


	25. Chapter 25: Alone

**Chapter 25: Alone**

She peeks out from the doorway as Mister Kinneas cleans up the classroom, watching him put away the workbooks and the various pencils that people had borrowed back into their places on shelves. He adjusts his cowboy hat a few times as he works, wiping away the sweat on his brow. As she watches, words clumsily form in her mouth, ready to come out and tell her beloved teacher what had had happened and why she had to ask for another workbook for class.

But Xion remains absolutely silent.

The words die in her throat as she moves away from the door, slowly walking back to the bathroom where her ruined things lay in their watery tombs. Tears threaten to fall down the little girl's pale cheeks as she contemplates ripping out a few of the hooks from the other girls' closets to get her revenge. But even as her hand reaches out to the first door, she knows that she would not do it. Her hand instead drops heavily to her side and Xion crouches down on the floor, hugging the little Goofy plush charm that her father had given her.

The toy is wet, reeking with the chemicals that the janitors used to clean the bathroom floor. But she cradles it anyway, giving it a sloppy kiss on its brown hat to soothe the soul she believed that it contained.

"I'm sorry," Xion whispers to it quietly, rubbing her cheek against its soft velvet fur. "I'm sorry, Goofy." The toy says nothing back to her but continues to give her its usual happy big-toothed smile, barely dampened by its trip through the air and then to the bathroom floor. She hugs it tightly, allowing her dear friend to absorb her tears and to help her control her misery.

Stone, she tells herself. You are made of stone. None of it matters. She hugs the little dog that much tighter, pressing her lips to his soggy hat. They weren't her friends, they didn't like her, so it didn't matter.

The lie wasn't that good, but it made her feel better.

After a few minutes, Xion straightens up again, her blue eyes darkening with determination as she walks back into the bathroom. She grabs her backpack from the sink, nearly stumbling from the intense weight that the water gave to its previously light contents. Carefully tucking Goofy into a small pocket on the side of her backpack, she starts pulling books from the toilet and dropping them inside of the bag, ignoring the squelchy plop of their ruined pages made inside of her bag.

It wasn't her fault. She hadn't put her backpack in the sink, she hadn't put her books into the toilet, someone else had. But Xion would deal with the consequences.

"Who's still here?"

Xion freezes in the middle of cramming a ripped fairy tale book into her pack. She had been caught. She hears Mister Kinneas's voice call out one more time, asking who was still here at school instead of being at home. Biting her bottom lip hard, she looks up to a small window set in the ceiling, wondering if she could somehow get up there and get out with her bundle of soaked papers without him noticing.

But no, the loud clomping footsteps of her teacher come closer and closer, each one thumping with the pounding of her panicked little heart.

She would be in trouble, Mister Kinneas would yell at her and tell her off for letting her books be ruined. He would scream at her for being such a klutz or even worse, he would pity her for being so stupid to have had her things be completely destroyed. He would mock her for it, tease her for being such a goof, and then he would force her to say that she was sorry for something she had had no control over.

The door handle of the bathroom turns, the door pushing in to reveal her teacher standing there before he takes a step into the room. His blue eyes sweep over the frozen child for a moment, scarring each little bit of flesh that they analyze. Xion's hands and her tear-stained cheeks burn with the intensity of his startled gaze but she quickly throws the last book into her backpack, bends down to shove the entire sodden mass onto her back, and shove her way past the young teacher.

"Bye Mister Kinneas, have a nice weekend," was all that the little girl could say to her teacher before running down the hallway, moving too quickly for the hand that had reached out to snatch her shoulder and stop her from going any further to grab. Xion scurries out of the teacher's way, throwing herself into an empty classroom and scrambling under the teacher's desk to hide. She folds her shaking legs beneath her plaid skirt, covering her eyes with her hands as she presses her body against the inside of the wooden desk.

She hears Mister Kinneas yell out her name, to stop and to talk to him, but she remains silent. Her little heart pounds inside of her chest, ba-dump, ba-dump inside of her as the heavy footsteps of her teacher run past the room, obviously intent on finding out what was wrong with his favorite student. What had happened to her.

All that Xion does is drop her head into her hands, letting herself think for a few more minutes. Just a few minutes longer. Then she could go home and no one would yell at her again.

Then she wouldn't be alone.


	26. Chapter 26: Father

**Chapter 26: Father**

The words seemed strange to him. They did not make any sense in his fevered head, they did not make sense in any reality. But the little boy keeps looking up at him through the cracked plate of glass between them, his dark blue eyes a mirror of the one staring back down at him.

There is a serious look in the child's eyes, something that made Riku's skin crawl. It wasn't the color of the eyes, no, even though they were exactly the same as his own. It wasn't how the boy had also inherited the shock of silvery gray hair that was so particular to his family. Riku presses his face a little harder toward the boy, ignoring how Haru's face contorted and backed away from him. But he still held the phone to his ear, he still held the device that would allow him to hear his father's voice.

Yes, Riku could see it now. Riku could see what made this little boy his son.

"Haru?" Riku says softly in a voice hardened from disuse. "Would you like to go live with me? When I get out in a few days?" The little boy blinks once before glancing up at the suited woman at his side, frowning that much more at her. She glares at him venomously, bending down and opening her red lipstick painted mouth to demand to know what her former lover had said. Before he bothered to answer her, before he could even understand the gesture he was making, the little boy's head bobs down once.

Riku smiles.

"Well then, I think you can call me Dad. Do you think you could do that, little buddy?" He asks his son in that same voice, watching with pride as Haru's head raises itself a little more, with a little more self-confidence. His child nods one more time, a shy smile flitting across his small face. "I think I could do that." He parrots the sentence in a high voice, pressing his tiny hand against the glass separating the two of them.

"I think I could do that, Daddy."


	27. Chapter 27: Watching You

**Chapter 27: Watching You**

She looks up at the bus schedule again, making the person watching her flinch. The little bit of paper continue to absentmindedly show the times that the buses left the station, unknowing that one of its normal riders was still there. She had missed some bus from earlier, probably the one with all the little girls in the same uniform that she was wearing. It had left almost half an hour ago.

So the little girl hugs her toy to her chest, closing her eyes for a moment and allowing herself a chance to wish. The little girl, Xion, wishes for the bus to come back in for her, for the kindly old bus driver that he had seen driving the bus to notice she wasn't there, and for someone to come.

As he expected, no one comes, no one bothers to ask about the little girl sitting alone in the bus stop with only a small plush toy to keep her company. She is only one more sight in a thousand, one more person in a group, and she is nothing but a little shadow in the eyes of the adults around her.

But a pair of solemn blue eyes notices her tears and the owner of the sad eyes watches as the child cries secretly into her Goofy, pretending to simply hold it against her cheek. The tears look like liquid diamonds to the person watching her, something precious that he wanted to touch and to examine for himself. They look both cold and warm, and his fingers long to find out for himself. But her sad little state doesn't evade him. He knows that she is sad, although he does not know why. But he recognizes the sadness, having seen it a thousand times in a pair of dark blue eyes just like hers.

It is familiar, and he wonders if someone had hurt her. The little cheeks that were mashed in the side of the toy were pale from crying, not red from a person's hand. So she hadn't been physically hurt. He bites his tongue, watching her shake for a minute or so, feeling a well of pity that he didn't know that he had rise up inside of him. He had traveled far to get to this town, to provide information, and he had never expected to see this little girl crying. She was affecting him in a strange way, making his normally mute mouth want to speak.

For a moment, his mouth opens to speak to the crying little girl and to comfort her, to show her that it would be alright. But he falls silent again, knowing that it wasn't a good idea to try to talk to her. He couldn't talk to strangers. Instead, he simply tightens his grip around the hand he was holding, allowing himself to be led away. As they get on the next bus that had begun to fill up, his gaze remains focused on the little girl.

He presses his free hand on the window, trying to will her to look up at him. Her name echoes in his mind, a quiet whisper from an old voice.

Xion Hikari Minami. She was as beautiful as he had thought.


	28. Chapter 28: Late Again

**Chapter 28: Late Again**

She had been so stupid.

Xion scuffs her shoe against the pavement, trying to think of a way to explain her backpack. It hadn't been her fault that her things had been ruined, but she had to figure out a way to deal with the consequences of the whole thing. She watches as her brown loafer slowly turns gray from the dust she was kicking up, but she does not say a single word of protest out loud because she is so enraged.

The tears trickle down her face as the little girl walks down the street, moving past the twisting shadows in the depths of the alleys she strolled past. She does not see the creatures staring at her from within their hypnotized reveries and so Xion continues to walk down with her sodden backpack in her hand.

As she walks, she can hear a startled voice come from inside one of the buildings on the main street. The voice is all too familiar, one echoing of the same authority that her father had in his, and one dear to her heart. A door slams in the distance as a shop door opens and a lone figure comes out.

He is a fair distance away from her, but his appearance was unmistakable. His dark yellow hair contrasts harshly with the white stone of the buildings, looking like someone had just spilled gold against their formerly pristine homeyness. Sapphire eyes blink at her with concern from far away as the little girl bursts into tears and throws the soaked mess of papers and fabric to the cobblestones to start running.

Without missing a beat, the man drops down to one knee and opens his arms nice and wide.

Xion heaves herself into the awaiting body, crying with all the might in her tiny seven year old body, allowing herself to be comforted by those warm and gentle hands now running through her cropped hair. Her uncle holds her close for a moment, obviously staring at the sobbing little mess of little girl in his arms before he picked her up. He gently plops her head onto the space between his shoulder and his chest as he carried her off, cuddling with her in the same way he had always done since she was a baby.

"Oh, _Roxas_..." Xion sobs into his chest, clinging to him with all of her might. She was so very tired now, tired of a weight on her shoulders that she did not understand or even knew existed. But the child knows enough to know she was tired and so she cries, attempting to somehow know why she was a freak. With her face mashed into his uniform apron, she almost doesn't hear his answer.

"It's okay, baby," The deep voice rumbles in her ears, soothing her instantly with half-forgotten memories of naps taken long ago beneath the scrutinizing eyes of her mother and father and uncle. Xion feels Roxas's fingers untangle her hair for a moment, parting the messy black locks even as he held her that much closer to him. His heart beats with a strong, slow rhythm in her ears as he repeats an old promise to her. "It's going to be alright, Xion."

And once more, the child believes in those words.


	29. Chapter 29: Close

**Chapter 29: Close**

He adjusts the knot in his black tie, wishing with everything he had that he could retie the crooked thing into a proper Windsor knot. But Riku knows that he has no time and he settles on just fixing it out of sight and making it look like he had tied it right. A faint buzzing echoes in his ears, making the man pause for a moment and take in a few deep breaths.

He needed his medication.

Riku flexes his fingers into a fist and then curls them back out, his other hand conducting to a melody he was hearing in his head. The two hands wave together, delicately moving to the sweet and gentle music in his mind. His entire body sways to the rhythm for a moment before he slaps the two hands down to his side, forcing himself to stop.

He needed his medication.

Schizophrenia. That's what they had decided Riku had, when he told them about how he felt there was something in his head that didn't work right. The minute that he had been put on his medication, he had felt a thousand pounds rip from his shoulders and he had begun to cry, feeling himself be whole again.

He needed his medication.

Riku sets his head down heavily into his hands, feeling the buzzing get worse and worse, turning into a blinding headache. The tears trickle down his cheeks as he feels the little hand on his leg, pulling on his pants shyly. Riku looks down at his son, who was holding a large white bottle in his hands.

Haru gives him a shy smile before putting the bottle down in front of his father and looking up expectantly at Riku's lawyer, obviously waiting for praise. Even so, the little boy's body flinches automatically in a way that made Riku's heart break from the implications. Rayna had hurt him, she had hurt his child. So he put his hand down onto the little boy's head and playfully ruffled the mass of silvery white hair into a series of messed up spikes.

"Thanks, little guy," He tells his son with a big smile and he allows the little boy to climb up into his lap. Haru presses his head against his chest and Riku begins to remove the top of the bottle in order to get to his pills, even as the headache got worse and worse. Soon, he would be practically ripping the top of the bottle off with his teeth just to alleviate the pain thundering behind his eyes.

The lawyer coughs slightly, attempting to get Riku's attention. "We should probably be getting ready," The man tells him quietly before adjusting his already perfectly aligned tie a little more. Riku blinks once before nodding, hooking a few pills out with his fingers.

"Of course," Riku mutters softly as he shoves them into his mouth and chokes them down without water. "What exactly do we need to do?" He asks in a louder voice as he turns his son around in his lap, straightening the boy's clothes before bothering to begin with his own. Haru flinches at the touch but soon sits still, a big smile constantly flitting across the solemn expression he was trying to keep on his face.

He is so obviously pleased with how his father was giving him attention and that makes Riku smile. It is a simple task to make his son happy and to keep on furthering the connection between them. He finally has something to live for, even if little Haru didn't know it yet. Just the idea, just the idea of having that home with his son back on the island is enough to make Riku want to fight and to keep going.

He wants to introduce his son to Sora, to make Sora and Kairi and even little Xion smile again.

Riku smooths down his son's wrinkled shirt before retying the small red bow tie around his collar. He nods vaguely to the directions as the lawyer tells him to be pleasant, to be courteous to the ones letting him have an appeal, and to answer every question as honestly as he possibly could. All the while, he keeps fixing Haru's clothes, making sure that the little boy's slightly too big suit was as nice as possible.

He then fixes his own black tie and holds out his wrists to be hand-cuffed.

A moment before the cold metal could snap around his arms, Haru blurts out a question. "Daddy, if you have dose, you not goin' to hold my hand?" Riku looks down at the little boy in his lap and then back up at the guard.

Haru sometimes had trouble saying words with the "th" sound, and often forgot to say "are" and "am," a strange little quirk that Riku discovered after he kept coming back to see him. But now the little boy keeps staring up at him, the strangeness of his speech conveying his secret wish to be able to hold his hand in the courthouse. It seems Haru had somehow related going into court as the same as being led to the doctor; the child wants to hold his father's hand in order to show him that he would be alright, much like how his grandmother held his hand whenever he went into the doctor's office to get a shot.

Riku feels his lips turn up into a smile before he carefully deposited his hand back into the little boy's, allowing his lawyer and the guard to help him up without the cuffs.


	30. Chapter 30: Uncle's Love

**Chapter 30: Uncle's Love**

Roxas bounces Xion in his arms, letting the whimpering seven year old cry into his chest. Her weak little cries makes his heart ache, they were so very sad and pathetic that he just wants to keep on walking and hide her away until no one would ever hurt her again. She could be home schooled, right?

When the little girl sniffles and finally becomes quiet, Roxas walks towards the shop door he had left open. Xion nuzzles into his throat as he strolls toward it and thought hard about what he was going to tell Axel.

Knowing the red-headed pyromaniac's tendency to overreact, it was probably a very good idea to lose the waterlogged backpack and pretend Xion had lost it and that she had missed the bus.

After a moment, he reaches out and yanks the backpack from the little girl's shoulders. She shifts in his arms, pulling away just enough to look him in the eye. Roxas just flashes her a grin before hastily chucking the bag into one of the bushes in front of the shop. Xion sniffles again and puts her head back on his shoulder.

"... Mommy's going to get mad at me..." The little girl murmurs softly and Roxas could feel the sudden warmth of tears soaking through his shirt. He reaches up and runs his fingers through the girl's cropped black hair, sighing at Xion's all too solemn conviction that everyone in the world was against her.

"No, Xion, your mom's not going to get mad at you," Roxas tells her patiently as he carries her up the steps of the White Witch Art Shop. The little girl sniffs once, as if telling her not quite uncle that she didn't believe him in the slightest. Her uncle knows that she doesn't, if only because of her skewed view on what got people of authority – like her mom – angry.

Instead of letting her continue to pout in his arms, Uncle Roxas kicks the door to the store open.

The lack of customers for the art shop allows him to simply stroll right past the aisles of notepads, color pencils, markers, and ribbons in favor of the small living area behind the wall. He bounces this door open with his hip, plops a silent Xion onto the couch, and crouched down next to her.

For a moment, she doesn't speak. She simply looks up at him with those big blue eyes and waits. Roxas isn't sure what she was waiting for but when the first tear trickles down her cheek, he simply wipes it away. Xion bursts into tears and jumps into his arms for a second time, pressing her face hard into his chest.

He picks her up again and holds her close, carefully slipping a small pouch of munny into her pocket as she cries into him. Roxas sits down on the couch and begins to sing to the sobbing little girl, singing the song that her godfather once sang in order to soothe her to sleep.

"_In you and I... there's a new land..."_

As the song went on, the little girl's body slowly stops trembling and her fingers stop clutching to her uncle's work shirt. The man continues to stroke her hair gently, working the tangles out with his fingers.

"I hate school," Xion said after a long while, lifting her head to reveal her now slightly swollen eyes. Roxas wipes one last tear from her cheek, puts his chin on her head, and sighs softly, a sign for her to continue. "I hate school, everyone's mean to me and they put my books in the toilet." She admitted softly, rubbing at her eyes hard.

Roxas smirks, his blue eyes filling with mischief. "I think Axel can help with that," He replies honestly, giving her a nonchalant shrug before kissing her on the forehead. Xion blinks once before smiling up at him. "So where's Uncle Axel?" He asks in a sing-song voice, making her giggle softly at his antics. The happy look in her face is enough to make the silliness worth it, even if he did feel like a complete idiot. She had come so far... she had come so far from the little girl she used to be...

Xion grins, already knowing _exactly_ what Roxas was hinting at.

"At the ice cream shop!"


	31. Chapter 31: Family

**Chapter Thirty One: Family**

As they walk in, Axel immediately flashes his two best customers a big grin. "Well, if it isn't Xion and Roxas! What can I get you?" He asks mostly out of habit rather than not knowing what they wanted. Roxas shakes his head and looks down at the little girl skipping alongside him to the counter.

Xion is smiling brightly, a stark contrast against the miserable little girl he had been comforting just a little while before. Her eyes are full of nothing but the hundreds of flavors of ice cream, each one begging the child to get one or more of the sweet treats. She looks one way and then another, checking to see which one she wanted more.

Roxas puts his finger to his lips as he walks to the counter and leans against it, nodding down toward the enchanted child. "They here yet?" He asked softly, whispering it secretively. Axel shakes his head. "Yeah... we're calling a family meeting. … You know what happened?" He demanded curiously.

The blond smiles darkly. "Of course I know that that shithead's getting out. I won't let him hurt little Xion. I promised Sora that when we re-baptized her." Roxas says in a blunt way, shrugging when Xion stumbles over his boots to look at the other side of the counter. "Watch it, honey, the nicer ice cream's on the other side." He warns her.

Roxas is immediately rewarded with a huge smile and a cheerful nod and then Xion peeks back into the glass counter. "Okay, Uncle Roxas!" She says in a sing song voice, too excited by the idea of ice cream to focus on the grown ups talking above her.

Axel rubs his fiery red hair hard, shaking his head as he does so. "You think he'll come here? I mean... he has no idea where they went, right?" He asks nervously and he looks down at Xion in emphasis. Roxas nods. "Yeah, but he might have a good guess. After all... Sora and Kairi didn't exactly have a lot of places to go. We told some of the others to say that they went to go live with them, though. You know, Sora's old college friends?"

Axel laughs. "Oh, who could forget Aladdin, the Beast, and all those beautiful ladies that Sora knows?! Blitzball player scholarship my ass, he went to go hang out with cute girls!" He jokes, nearly choking in laughter.

Xion stares up at him curiously but then tugs on Roxas' sleeve, pointing into one of the glass chambers. "I want that one, Uncle Roxas, pleeeeeease?" She begs, putting her hands together in an imitation of a prayer. Roxas looks down into the glass himself and starts to laugh.

"Of course you can get a sea salt, Xion. In fact, we'll get _three_ and we'll eat them all and Axel can't have any!" Roxas teases with a mocking wink toward the employee, who immediately began to fume. "_What_?! What do you mean I can't have one?!" Axel demands in mock anger, reaching over the counter to grab Roxas by the shirt collar.

Xion giggles softly before putting on a sorry face. "Uncle Axel?" She says quietly, giving him a big smile before he could start pretending to beat up the laughing Roxas. "You can have one of my ice creams if you want to!"

Axel grins. "See? You should be a respectable adult just like Xion... Roxie tiger." He teases, squeezing Roxas' cheeks mockingly before reaching into the right glass counter for the ice cream. Roxas scowls. "And just how many times have I told you not to call me Roxie _or_ tiger?" He demands.

Axel scoops out three ice cream bars, bends down over the counter to hand one of them to Xion, and grins. "At least a thousand. Say it a thousand more and _maybe_ I'll start paying attention." He snorts, shaking his head and winking secretively at Xion. He then shoves the second one at Roxas and starts eating the third one himself.

Xion popped the ice cream into her mouth and laughed out loud at her friend's antics. She loved her family so much. She immediately turned to the chair that always was near the counter and plopped herself into it to watch Axel and Uncle Roxas suddenly grab each other and start smacking each other around playfully.

She had just finished her ice cream when her father walked through the door. "Eh? You guys are early!" Sora cried out in surprise as Roxas got choked in a head lock. "Nah, you're late, Sora." Axel told him in amusement as he rubbed his knuckles hard against his friend's blond head.

"OW! I give!" Roxas yelled as Sora made his way inside and flashed a grin over at his daughter. Xion immediately looked down to the ground, unable to meet her daddy's gaze. He would be so disappointed in her, he would probably ground her for being so stupid and letting her stuff get ruined.

"Honey? What's wrong?" Sora asked before walking over to her chair and dropping down to one knee. The seven year old said nothing and continued to stare at the dripping ice cream stick in her hand. She hadn't gotten a winner mark yet, but Axel assured her that it was only a matter of time before she did. The tears trickled down her cheeks as her dad wrapped his arms around her and picked her up.

Sora ran his fingers through her cropped black hair, rocking her in his arms like he used to do when she was barely able to walk and talk. "There, there, honey, don't cry. Did something happen at school today?" The man said in a soft voice, patting her head gently. Xion said nothing but buried her head in her daddy's shoulder, trying to keep herself from crying.

He would be yelling at her soon enough, he would be so disappointed.

Roxas wrenched his way free from Axel and gave him a hard kick in the shin, making the red head drop to his knee yelping. "Kairi's here already," He informed Sora calmly. Sora immediately stiffened and he nodded once before putting Xion back in her chair.

Xion stared at him in confusion. Normally, her daddy would wheedle the information out of her through a combination of babying and bribing in order to get what he wanted. But this time, there was a funny look on his face as he looked back at her. There was something dark in his eyes and she didn't like it.

Sora stood up and rubbed hard at his spiky brown hair. "Alright, then we should get started. Axel, you mind-?" He started to ask before being cut off with a lazy hand wave. Axel just grinned and plopped a 'closed' sign on the counter. "I think the management would let me play babysitter for an hour or two. You guys have the meeting." He told Roxas and Sora calmly.

His eyes flickered down to Xion for a moment, and she saw the same darkness in her father's reflected inside.

Just what happened? What had she done?


	32. Chapter 32: If He

**Chapter Thirty Two: If He**

The three all stare at each other for a moment, each one thinking the various things that they didn't want to say out loud. Xion was in danger, Riku was almost out, they would have to move again, Roxas would probably go after Riku in order to get his revenge. There are a thousand things that they are thinking but a thousand more fears that they cannot bring themselves to say.

How could one know what their fears were? How could one know the way that Kairi's hands trembled and how her arms ached to have her daughter in them? How could one know Sora's instincts to take his wife and child and run as far away so that no one could catch them? How could one know Roxas' rage and pain at the idea of having yet another precious person taken away from him? How could one know the sorrow of Naminé's passing, her very presence in the room as the three friends stare at each other?

How could one know the fear of losing their child to someone who had been precious himself?

Sora turns to his wife before enveloping her in a tight hug, running his fingers through her auburn hair as she shook and clung to him. His tears trickle down his face before Kairi's do, and Roxas turns away from the scene.

The man shakes his head when Sora and Kairi look at him, simply raising his hand in order to tell them that he didn't mind if they cried for a bit. As he raises his hand, a little bit of his sleeve slips down his arm, and he accidentally reveals the deep scarring on his wrist. His long fingers curl into his palm as Roxas sits back in his chair, staring at his hand and wrist.

Kairi removes her arm from around Sora's waist and holds out her hand to the solemn Roxas, asking him to join them.

For a moment, he only sits there in confusion, his lashes dancing on his cheeks as he blinks rapidly. Then a slight smile crosses his lips, making a light suddenly sparkle in his eyes. Roxas gets up and wraps his hand around Kairi's before turning and putting his other one on Sora's shoulder. A few tears trickle down his cheeks as he smiles at them.

Then his expression turns dark as the tears start to fall down faster, thicker, warmer, and a thousand times more painful.

He shakes hard before burying his face in Sora's shoulder, letting out a low whimper that was actually a very muffled scream. Roxas screams into Sora's shoulder as he sobs and his hand tightens painfully around Kairi's, barely able to contain the agony he is suddenly feeling. It is all he can do to keep himself upright and the parents can only allow him to cry and to hold onto them.

It is a few minutes before Roxas' face lifts and Sora and Kairi can see the absolute agony in his eyes as he rips himself free from them. He rubs at his eyes hard, like a stubborn child refusing to cry and attempting to deny that he had ever been crying.

Sora flashes him a smile before leaning into him, whispering something into his ear quietly. It is clear from the way that he speaks that he does not want Kairi to hear and then Roxas' face suddenly clears. The rage vanishes and he smiles. A nod passes wordlessly between the two friends and they clap their hands together in a tight handshake, promising each other the unthinkable.


End file.
